Continuing on from my guide showing you how to make money as an Amazon Associate, today I want to give you a bit more “technical” guide and actually show you;
How to build an Amazon affiliate website from scratch and the work that has to go into this “project” to make it a viable and profitable business venture for you.
As I am sure you know, the Amazon Associates program is one of the best affiliate programs out there (especially for beginners) due to the power of the Amazon brand and how the affiliate program is set up.
If you’re a beginner to the whole “Amazon affiliate marketing” business model, then this guide should help you get a clear idea of how to build a website designed to make money through the Amazon associates program and also how to make it successful.
Here’s what I will be covering in this guide:
- How to choose a profitable niche to target with your Amazon website
- How to build an Amazon affiliate website (from scratch)
- How to “set up” your website to make it easy to get traffic (and sales)
- How to build out your website (with a long-term strategy).
- How to make money from your affiliate website plus
- A few things you
shouldneed to know about &
If you make it till the end, I’ll even give you a free course (with a clear roadmap to success) which will help you build an insanely successful Amazon affiliate website.
Ready to get started?
Let’s dive in…
How To Choose A Profitable Amazon Affiliate Niche
So, first things first – you need to pick a niche.
You can think of a niche as a “specific group of people looking to buy something”.
However, you can’t go too broad with this – the more focused you are with your content and the product you promote, the quicker you can get a foot in the door of search engines and thus; people looking for information you can provide.
I have a mega 4000-word guide on how to pick profitable Amazon niches here so I won’t be going through the specific process again here – however, I will share with you two “golden nuggets’ I share in that guide,
- Only promote products on Amazon that are priced $300+ (I will tell you why this is important further down below)
- Find a specific product line (niche) with at least 10,000 searches per month.
What I mean here is that there has to be a “demand” for the products you are going to be promoting on your website.
There are millions of products on Amazon (and you’re more than welcome to promote any of them) – but you do need to make sure that people are interested in buying that product.
Again, I refer you to my guide on profitable niche picking here – it’s very important that you know how to pick a niche that can make money before you actually start building out your website, which is what I will talk about next…
How To Build Your Amazon Website
Once you have a product (or a niche) in mind that you want to get into, you need to obviously start your website.
To do this, you are going to need three things;
A domain name:
A domain name is your “address” on the worldwide web, in my case, it’s 3hundrd.com.
Picking a domain can be hard given how many of the “good ones” are already taken, but don’t let this stop you, with some creativity and some brainstorming, I’m sure you will find a domain name you’ll love.
A hosting plan:
A hosting plan is what keeps your website accessible on the internet. This usually costs around $5 to $15 per month (check out BlueHost for the best deal) and you can say it’s the only “monthly expense” you will have to spend.
Obviously, you are going to need hosting so it’s not really an option at this point.
A WordPress website:
Forget about every other website builder tool out there, just get on WordPress.
It’s free, it’s fast and it’s the most powerful system in the world – there’s absolutely nothing else that comes close to the functionality of WordPress.
If you’d like, you can get a free WordPress website from here.
How To Set Up Your Affiliate Website For Success (Traffic)
So your Amazon Affiliate website is up and running, you’ve got a domain name you’re semi-happy with, you have a hosting plan and your website is taking shape.
What do you do next?
Next on your list, should be traffic.
To be able to make money with your Amazon website, you are going to need to have people (traffic) coming in.
This is why I specifically mentioned earlier that the product (niche) you pick must have enough searches to make it worthwhile (you can see how to find out the search volume of a keyword here).
To get traffic, you can either go the Pinterest-route, or you can go with SEO.
SEO is the best kind of traffic you can get for an Amazon affiliate website but I’ve been having some great success with Pinterest as well his past year.
(It’s very easy to go viral on Pinterest and people on Pinterest just LOVE to shop).
Whatever approach you choose, you are always going to need to have content on your website, and that’s what I’m going to share with you next…
SN: You can see my guide on how to get Pinterest traffic here.
How To Create Content For An Amazon Affiliate Website (The 10/10/10 Content Strategy)
Over the years, I’ve developed a little strategy on how to structure the content for an affiliate website.
I have to give credit to IncomeSchool.com for this because I’ve got the foundation of this strategy for them, but I’ve also added it (and made it better) – you can see what I mean in my Affiliate SEO Mastery course.
In a nutshell, the 10/10/10 content plan goes a little bit like this…
10 Questions Posts:
- ‘where to…”
- “why does…”
- “is ~insert product here~ safe to use?”
10 Review Posts:
- “product X review”
- “product Y review”
- “product Z review”
10 How-To Posts:
- “how to use ~insert product here~ for best results”
- “how to fix ~insert problem here~ with “insert product here~”
- “how to clean ~insert product here~”
These are just some examples of what you can do with each type of post.
Of course – some niches may require different questions to be answered so you need to make a list of these keywords yourself and plan them out to be published on your website.
If you need help coming up with these type of question-keywords, you can use the free AnswerThePublic tool.
What happens once you have published all 30 posts?
When you’ve published 30 posts, you can either wait to see what results come from them or (as I do it) you can leave the site to run on its own (and never work on it again while it’s passively earning you money).
Whenever I start a new website – and this year I plan on starting 10 new websites for a case study I’m building – I publish 30 posts and then just walk away.
If I see that the site is gaining traction, and it looks promising, I then do another round of 30 posts, and then I wait some more and I keep repeating the process again and again in the future.
That is all that I do.
I currently run 16 affiliate websites (some of them being Amazon affiliate websites) with this format and it’s the easiest way I have found to build, run and make money from Amazon affiliate website without having to do much work.
You can see how I structure my affiliate website portfolio here, or you can follow along with the case study here (I publish a new update every first of the month).
The Best Way To Make Money From Your Affiliate Website
Let’s talk about how to monetise an Amazon affiliate website now because I’m sure you’re itching to know how you’re going to make money.
The posts that will make you money are the reviews you publish.
Most likely – speaking from experiences – they will rank the highest/quickest and they will also be the ones that drive traffic to Amazon and earn you commissions.
I’m saying this so you can put actual effort into creating your reviews.
There are many – many – people doing Amazon affiliate marketing and they do it mostly with reviews so you really need to “up your game” when it comes to reviews.
You can see how to create high-quality Amazon reviews here.
The other 20 posts (info & how to) are aimed at driving traffic to the products you are recommending (i.e the reviews).
One tip I can share with you here is not to add your Amazon affiliate links to all the pages – just keep them in your reviews.
If you keep this 1:2 ratio of reviews to informational content, your site will be seen by Google (and visitors) as an information-source rather than just another bridge website to Amazon.
Focus on creating great, high-converting reviews, and use the info post to prop up and drive traffic to them.
Trust me – this is the best way to make money with your affiliate website.
Now that we’ve covered how to build your Amazon affiliate website, let me share with you a few things which I believe you should know to give you the best chances at success.
(Don’t forge; down below I also have a free training course for you that will show you how to get started but first, let’s take a look at a few things you should always keep in mind…
10 Things You Should Know About Amazon Affiliate Marketing
Competition Is Rife (But Don’t Let It Scare You)
As I said, there are plenty of people doing “Amazon review websites”.
Rest assured you’re not the only player in town.
This means that you need to really put in effort into your new hustle and don’t take it lightly as you will not get anywhere.
Treat it like a business, and it will pay you like a business.
With that said, I also have to stress not to let the competition scare you off the game.
Competition means people are making money – if there was zero competition, it means this “business model” has stopped working and it’d be useless to try and do it yourself.
(Don’t worry – Amazon affiliate marketing is not going anywhere soon).
You Get Paid For Everything You Sell
Want to know a cool benefit of using the Amazon affiliate program?
If you send a customer to a product page for “dog collars” and they buy a watch instead, you also earn a commission off the watch.
My first 3 sales on Amazon came from something I was not promoting. This is a huge benefit for all affiliate marketers as it allows the incredible selling machine that is Amazon to work for you.
You Have 24 Hours To Complete The Sale (Or 30 Days)
At the time of writing, the “affiliate cookie” for Amazon works as such:
- If you send a customer to Amazon, you have 24 hours for them to make a purchase, however;
- If they add a product to their cart, you have 30 days until they checkout (so you can earn your commission).
As I said, Amazon is the best at selling so if they have it on their cart, chances are they will be buying soon (and you will make your commission).
It Takes Time To Build Up
Amazon affiliate websites are relatively easy to build, but this does not mean you will be making money from day one.
It actually takes time to get it up and running so there’s a bit of a waiting game that needs to be played here.
Don’t expect to start making money from day one – on average, I would say you do need to give it at least 6-8 months before you start making some serious money with this.
Are 8 months too long to wait so that you can have an extra – potentially full time- income coming in, if it is – then affiliate marketing is probably not for you.
Don’t Promote Anything Less Than $300
I admit; Amazon’s commission rates are not great.
On average, you’re looking at about 5 to 8% commissions on products you sell (it’s different for different categories).
This means that if you try to sell a $20 product, then it’s going to take A LOT of time, effort and energy to make a sizable income with this.
If you stick to my recommended $300+ products, then you’re looking at about ~$15 per sale.
Make 3+ sales a day, and you’re looking at some serious monthly income. Three sales are not that hard to get (especially when you have reviews which are ranking and converting well).
If you’re curious about the number, I have a guide that runs through the numbers on how much traffic you need to make $1000 a month.
Don’t Use Un-Affiliated Links
One big mistake that I often see people doing is they post the Amazon link (from the browser) and not the Amazon affiliate link provided by the Amazon Associates program.
Of course, if your link is not tagged with your own unique affiliate ID, then you will not get credit for the sale.
You can see how to find your affiliate links on Amazon in the linked guide.
Yes, Amazon Affiliate Marketing Still Works
I spend my days reading about affiliate marketing and how to make money online.
Every so often, I come across some BS site that claims “making money with Amazon affiliate websites is not possible anymore”.
Wrong.
It’s very much possible – you just need to know how to do it.
Simply creating a website, throwing in a few affiliate links and calling it a day is not how you do Amazon affiliate marketing.
Follow the guide I have prepared for you here (and join the free course I have for you below) and you will see how profitable Amazon affiliate marketing really is.
Do Not Use Your Amazon Affiliate Links To Buy Things
Quick note: if you plan on buying stuff from Amazon for yourself, do not use your affiliate link.
I can’t confirm this, but I doubt Amazon will be too happy about that.
IMO, you should always stay away from buying things with your affiliate links (whether that’s Amazon or not).
You don’t want to risk getting banned (and losing your entire business) because you wanted to make a few extra cents.
Do Not Spam Social Networks With Your Amazon Affiliate Links
Should you post Amazon affiliate links on social media?
No – again, this is risky and can get you banned.
You may be able to get away with it on Pinterest, but I wouldn’t test that either.
In the past, Pinterest banned all affiliate links (and replaced all affiliate links with their own) and there’s no telling if they will ever do it again.
If you want to use Pinterest (or any other social media) to promote affiliate links, I suggest you first check out this helpful guide to show you how to do it right.
Track Your Links (If You Have More Than One Amazon Affiliate Website)
If you plan on building more than one site – which is how I do it and it’s very easy to do following the plan I laid out for you here, you need to make sure you are tracking your links properly.
To do this, you can use the “tracking IDs” feature inside the Amazon associates platform.
It’s best to know which site is making sales. I’ve done the mistake of using the same tracking ID for all my websites and it was a complete mess trying to figure out how much a website is really earning.
That’s it – that’s all you need to know about starting, growing and making money from Amazon affiliate websites.
As promised – since you’ve made it all the way down here – I do have a free course for you though, and you’d do well in becoming a member today.
FREE: Amazon Affiliate Marketing Training Course
Want to learn Amazon affiliate marketing the proper way?
To get my start with Amazon (& affiliate marketing in general) I used the Wealthy Affiliate training program and so have many of my students (which are now successful Amazon affiliates in their own right).
In this training course, you will learn:
- How to pick a niche
- How to pick products from Amazon that make money
- How to build “the foundation” of your website
- How to get traffic to your Amazon affiliate website and
- A whole lot more (too many to mention here)
You can see a detailed review of this course/community here – it’s free to join (no credit card required) and you can start from today building your Amazon affiliate website.
Thank you for reading my guide. I hope this has put you on the right track forward towards achieving success with your Amazon affiliate website.
I wish you all the best with your new Amazon affiliate business and if you have any questions, be sure to let me know down below.
Talk soon.
