AFFILIATE MARKETING

A Step by Step Guide for 2023

Published

1 year ago

February 23, 2023

Max

So you want to learn how to become an Amazon affiliate?

It seems simple, but you should be careful.

If done improperly, you can lose your chances of being an Amazon affiliate forever.

In this article, you’ll learn:

How to become an Amazon affiliate
Rules and requirements of the program
How much it pays
Common mistakes to avoid
Best Amazon affiliate promotion tools

And more.

Let’s get started.

About the Amazon Affiliate Program

The Amazon Affiliate program, called Amazon Associates, is an affiliate program for almost everything sold on the Amazon marketplace.

It’s free and easy for anyone to sign up to the Amazon associates, and it’s a great way to start making some extra money with affiliate marketing.

As an Amazon Associate, you have access to a backend area where you can view your reports, link clicks, and earnings, and you can also make shortened affiliate links to almost any product on the marketplace.

How Much Does the Amazon Affiliate Program Pay?

The Amazon Associates program pays different commission rates for different Amazon product categories.

The highest commission rate you can earn through the Amazon Affiliate program is 10% for luxury beauty and coins. The lowest is 1% for physical video games and video game consoles.

Here is a breakdown of the categories and commission rates for the Amazon associates program. You can learn more about their special program fees here.

You can also check out our Amazon affiliate program review, where we break down everything you need to know.

Amazon Associates Program Rules

There are a few rules that you have to comply with in order to keep your account in good standing.

There are some guidelines that, if not followed, can lead to the permanent banning of your account.

Affiliate Disclosure: To comply with Amazon Associates and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, all Amazon affiliates must disclose their partnership with their audience. Your affiliate disclosure must be on every page where affiliate links may be and it must be clearly visible and obvious to the reader or viewer.
Site Disclosure: In addition to an affiliate disclosure on every page that you recommend Amazon products, affiliates must also have a general site disclosure that appears somewhere obvious on their website. The site disclosure should say: “As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.” A popular place to put this disclosure is in the footer so it’s seen on every page.
Link Shortening: Amazon provides affiliates with a link shortener directly on the website. Affiliates are not permitted to use other link cloaking or shortening methods like Bitly or Pretty Links.
Promotional Limitations: Amazon associates must adhere to the program’s promotional limitations, such as: you cannot promote your affiliate links offline, in books, DMs, private emails, or in softwares or plugins.

What Are The Requirements to Become an Amazon Affiliate?

Getting approved for the Amazon Associates affiliate program isn’t too difficult. However, not everyone gets accepted. Although this is a great program for beginners, they don’t let every single person in. Here are some general requirements to be approved for the Amazon Associates program.

Online Presence: To become an Amazon affiliate, you must have an online presence in the form of a website, app, blog, or YouTube channel.
Privacy Policy: If you have a website or blog, you are required to have a privacy policy to be eligible for the Amazon affiliate program.
Content Eligibility: To qualify for the Amazon associates program, your content must be free of materials that are: obscene, violent, false or deceptive, promote discrimination, promote illegal activity, directed towards children, contain Amazon trademarks, or violate any intellectual property rights.
3 Sales to Qualify: When you get approved to be an Amazon associate, you’re still in the “approval phase” for the first 180 days. One of the first requirements you must satisfy is making 3 qualified sales through your links within the first 6 months. Don’t use your own link to make purchases – this violates the terms of your affiliate account.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

When you sign up to become an Amazon associate, make sure you thoroughly go over the rules, regulations, and requirements.

The last thing you want is to build up a great income with Amazon Associates and find out you were violating a rule and getting your entire account banned. Here are some common mistakes to avoid as an Amazon affiliate.

Not properly disclosing your Amazon affiliate marketing partnership.
Displaying pricing on your website or social media – this is only allowed via apps and plugins that constantly refresh with Amazon’s API.
Cloaking or shortening your affiliate links – use Amazon’s SiteStripe feature to shorten your links, and you’ll be fine.
Applying before you’re ready to promote – if you don’t make any sales in the first 6 months, your account will be closed.
Sharing affiliate links via email marketing – this is a no-no.
Putting your affiliate links in ebooks, physical books, PDF downloads, or any kind of marketing material aside from social media or website content.

How to Become an Amazon Affiliate

Now that you know some of the most important info, let’s learn how to become an Amazon associate.

Create a website
Head to the Amazon Associates page
Sign up and input your information
Fill out the websites, apps, topics, and products section
Your associate ID & website descriptions
Fill out the traffic and monetization section
Verify your identity

Create a Website

In order to be eligible for the Amazon associate program, you need some kind of online presence. This can be a website, blog, YouTube channel, or even an app.

If you already have an active online presence, you can skip this step.

But if you don’t, a niche website is a great idea to make money with the Amazon associate program! Learn how to make a money-making niche website here.

Head to the Amazon Associates Page

Once you have your online presence set up, it’s time to start the actual application process to become an Amazon associate.

Head to the Amazon Affiliate Program page and click “Sign Up”.

Once you click this, Amazon will ask you to sign into your existing Amazon account. If you don’t have one, you can click “Create Your Amazon Account” to get started.

how to become an amazon affiliate - create your account

Once you either sign up or log in, you need to enter your Payee information, including your name, address, and phone number.

Websites, Apps, Topics, and Products

Once you fill out your personal information, the application will ask you to provide your websites or apps. If you have multiple of either, you can add them all.

Tip: this section is where you’ll put your websites, blogs, YouTube channels, etc.

Add every website that you plan to use your Amazon affiliate links on to this list, and then click “Next”.

Your Associate ID and Website Description

On the next page you’ll be able to choose your preferred Amazon Associate ID.

You can choose any Amazon Associates ID that you want. Be aware that this ID will appear in your affiliate links, so try to avoid any personal identifying information.

You can use the name of your website or business or choose a random name or string of letters to use as your Associate ID.

Next, it will ask you to describe your websites and/or apps and choose the niche. Here, you can write how people use your website or app and what type of content you produce.

Also, you can include how you plan to recommend Amazon products in your content.

The Traffic & Monetization Section

The Traffic & Monetization section of this page will ask you how you drive traffic to your websites or apps.

If you don’t know how you plan to drive traffic yet, Social Networks and SEO are great ways to drive traffic.

The rest of this page features drop-down menus to choose how you monetize your content, how you create links on your website, how many visitors you get, and your primary reason for joining the Amazon Affiliate program.

Verify Your Identity

After you fill out everything in your application, you need to input your payment information and verify your identity.

Selecting “Call Me Now” will give you a phone call to the mobile number you provided and an automated message with a PIN to type in on your application, and then you’re done!

How to Get Your Amazon Affiliate Links

Once your account is created, you will be taken directly to the Amazon Associates Central dashboard. This is where you can view your performance, download reports, make links, and more.

The easiest and fastest way to get your affiliate link for Amazon products is by using Associates SiteStripe.

SiteStripe is a toolbar that appears at the top of every page on Amazon and allows you to quickly grab a product link. You can choose text links, image links, or text and image combined.

SiteStripe also has a link-shortening feature to shorten your Amazon affiliate link into a branded Amazon link for sharing anywhere you want.

This special toolbar should appear on your regular Amazon account once you become an Amazon Associate. You can learn more in Amazon’s SiteStripe documentation here.

There are almost endless ways to promote affiliate links from any program – Amazon is no different!

The key to seeing success as an affiliate marketer is to pick a method, learn it, and do it consistently.

Niche websites are one of the best ways to promote Amazon affiliate links, but they’re not the only way. You can also promote your Amazon affiliate link on social media, or create videos on YouTube, TikTok, or Reels.

Here are some of our most popular articles on how to earn money with the Amazon affiliate program.

If you are new and want to learn how to do affiliate marketing in general, Niche Pursuits can help with that too.

If that’s you, you might be interested in affiliate marketing for beginners or you can learn where to post affiliate links.

There are a handful of tools and plugins that are incredibly helpful for anyone running a niche website and promoting the Amazon Associate program.

Here are a few of our favorite plugins and tools for Amazon affiliate marketing.

AAWP

AAWP is easily one of the top plugins for WordPress for Amazon affiliates. You can create comparison tables, single product boxes, multiple product boxes, and more, and it’s fully customizable.

You can read a full AAWP review here. Or you can simply:

AMZ Image

If you just want to insert an image from Amazon into your post that already has your affiliate link attached, AMZ Image is the perfect plugin for you.

Spencer Haws (creator of Niche Pursuits) created this plugin and it has great reviews from some of the top niche bloggers in the game.

Get AMZ Image here.

Amalinks Pro

The AMAlinks Pro plugin allows you to create custom buttons and showcase product boxes for any Amazon products.

This plugin has an Amazon product advertising API feature to pull up-to-date prices, and you can also use it without the API if you don’t yet have access.

Learn more in our AMAlinks Pro review.

Table Labs

Table Labs is another tool created by Spencer Haws, and this is a great plugin for beautiful comparison shopping tables for your Amazon affiliate links.

Check out Table Labs here.

Conclusion

Learning how to become an Amazon affiliate isn’t hard. In fact, the signup process is pretty simple and straightforward.

The hard part is keeping all the rules and requirements in mind and learning how to effectively promote your Amazon affiliate links to earn the most revenue from this affiliate program.

If you’re ready to hit the ground running and start a website monetized with the Amazon affiliate program, consider taking the Authority Site System training from Authority Hacker to set yourself up for success.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Samsung: 6-Day Workweek For Execs, Company in Emergency Mode

Published

15 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Samsung: 6-Day Workweek For Execs, Company in Emergency Mode

Four-day workweeks might have all the buzz, but one major tech company is going in the opposite direction.

Samsung is implementing a six-day workweek for all executives after some of the firm’s core businesses delivered lower-than-expected financial results last year.

A Samsung Group executive told a Korean news outlet that “considering that performance of our major units, including Samsung Electronics Co., fell short of expectations in 2023, we are introducing the six-day work week for executives to inject a sense of crisis and make all-out efforts to overcome this crisis.”

Lower performance combined with other economic uncertainties like high borrowing costs have pushed the South Korean company to enter “emergency mode,” per The Korea Economic Daily.

Executives at all Samsung Group divisions will be affected, including those in sales and manufacturing, according to the report.

Samsung had its worst financial year in over a decade in 2023, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that net profit fell 73% in Q4. It also lost its top spot on the global smartphone market to Apple in the same quarter, though it reclaimed it this year.

Though employees below the executive level aren’t yet mandated to clock in on weekends, some might follow the unwritten example of their bosses. After all, The Korea Economic Daily reports that executives across some Samsung divisions have been voluntarily working six days a week since January, before the company decided to implement the six-day workweek policy.

Entrepreneur has reached out to Samsung’s U.S. newsroom to ask if this news includes executives situated globally, including in the U.S., or if it only affects employees in Korea. Samsung did not immediately respond.

Research on the relationship between hours worked and output shows that working more does not necessarily increase productivity.

A Stanford project, for example, found that overwork leads to decreased total output. Average productivity decreases due to stress, sleep deprivation, and other factors “to the extent that the additional hours [worked] provide no benefit (and, in fact, are detrimental),” the study said.

Longer hours can also mean long-term health effects. The World Health Organization found that working more than 55 hours a week decreases life expectancy and increases the risk of stroke by 35%.

The same 55-hour workweek leads to a 17% higher risk of heart disease, per the same study.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

John Deere Hiring CTO ‘Chief Tractor Officer,’ TikTok Creator

Published

2 days ago

April 18, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

John Deere Hiring CTO 'Chief Tractor Officer,' TikTok Creator

^{This article originally appeared on Business Insider.}

Agriculture equipment company John Deere is on the hunt for a different kind of CTO.

The brand on Tuesday announced a two-week search to find a “Chief Tractor Officer” who would create social media content to reach younger consumers.

One winning applicant will receive up to $192,300 to traverse the country over the next several months showcasing the way John Deere products are used by workers, from Yellowstone National Park to Chicago’s Wrigley Field and beyond.

“No matter what you do — whether it’s your coffee, getting dressed in the morning, driving to work, the building you go into — it’s all been touched by a construction worker, a farmer, or a lawn care maintenance group,” Jen Hartmann, John Deere’s global director of strategic public relations, told AdAge.

To kick off the search, John Deere tapped NFL quarterback Brock Purdy (who will presumably be a bit busy this Fall to take the job himself) to star in a clip in which he attempts to set out on a road trip in an industrial tractor.

Suited up in the obligatory vest, work boots, and John Deere hat, Purdy’s progress is interrupted by teammate Colton McKivitz hopping into the cab while a string of messages floods in from other athletes and influencers expressing interest in the job.

The clip also represents the first time that the 187-year-old company has used celebrities to promote itself, Hartmann told AdAge.

According to the contest rules, entrants have until April 29 at midnight to submit a single 60-second video making their pitch for why they should be the face and voice of the company.

In addition, entrants must live in the 48 contiguous states or DC — sorry Hawaii and Alaska residents. Interestingly, any AI-generated submissions are prohibited, too.

Videos will be judged against four categories — originally, creativity, quality, and brand knowledge — after which five finalists will be chosen and notified after May 17.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

How to Capitalize On This Thriving Talent Pool to Drive Your Company’s Growth

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

How to Capitalize On This Thriving Talent Pool to Drive Your Company's Growth

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

As business operations shift, executives and entrepreneurs are increasingly turning to an on-demand workforce that is simultaneously empowered by technology and drawn to purpose-driven projects.

Consider Upwork, whose 2020 Future of Workforce Pulse Report revealed that nearly 80% of hiring managers engaging freelancers feel confident about doing so. These hires provide coveted expertise — on a project-to-project basis — that entrepreneurs need to scale their operations without incurring long-term overhead costs.

This new market paradigm also promotes dynamism, with 79% of businesses agreeing that freelance talent enables greater innovativeness. Perhaps most telling, 84% of hiring managers utilizing it feel more assured about adapting to future disruption, compared to just 69% of those relying solely on full-time staff.

By capitalizing on freelance marketplaces, entrepreneurs can amplify employer branding, augment capabilities and future-proof organizations, even amid turbulence. As nearly 60% of hiring managers plan to increase engagement with freelancers over the next two years, the time is now for executives to realize their inherent potential.

The job market continues to shift

After a season of massive hiring, we’re back to seeing layoffs and downsizing. Companies are feeling the bloat—from unused office spaces with rising rent to oversized employee structures — and are shifting focus to hiring only the most essential positions. This leaves a critical talent gap needed for complex projects and specialized tasks. Highly skilled and specialized independents can fill this void.

A few key benefits to engaging them:

• Access to niche experts: Platforms like Toptal and Guru provide access to elite professionals from leading Fortune 500 companies and innovative startups. Whether the need is for a machine learning specialist, growth strategist or financial modeler, entrepreneurs can now curate on-demand teams that boast specialized skillsets, enabling them to focus investment on projects with the highest strategic value.

• Enhanced agility: Leading corporations increasingly “rent” skills by tapping freelance experts for initiatives involving new technologies or while entering unfamiliar markets. With niche contributors available to plug knowledge gaps, owners can explore ideas that once seemed unrealistic due to internal constraints—unlocking inventiveness and first-mover advantage.

• Stronger employment brand: Blending full-time employees with project-based freelancers signals a commitment to modernization and work-life balance. Offering both engaging work and flexibility will help draw exceptional candidates and help you compete with corporate giants for top-tier talent.

Tips for capitalizing on gig talent

Having explored the forces reshaping work, executives may wonder how to effectively leverage freelance platforms. After all, how can you know you’re getting your money’s worth if a hire isn’t physically present full-time?

• Define projects clearly: Contract hires thrive when expectations and deadlines are established upfront. So, clearly, detail needs around deliverables, success metrics, required skills and projected time investments. Staying ahead when it comes to communication and expectations will help avoid headaches, including delays.

• Build loyalty with talent: The best independent professionals have options regarding the projects they accept. Study their profiles to discern passions and incentives. Offer interesting work, flexibility and strong communication to motivate interest and improve results.

• Manage collaboration: Provide steady context, feedback and guidance at each project stage, but also foster autonomy, even while directing efforts toward strategic goals. A dynamic balance of these qualities drives optimal outcomes.

• Continue expanding your talent pool: Add proven freelancers to an internal database for repeat engagements, and notify talent about new initiatives for which their expertise would provide an edge. Uncovering additional ways, freelancers can enhance the business deepens the relationship.

Top platforms for connecting with talent

Now comes the hard part: finding contractors who bring fractional expertise sets. There are a growing number of platforms, of course, but I’ve found that the following stand out as leaders:

Fiverr: Ideal for execs seeking design, digital marketing, writing, video and admin support. Known for affordability and ease of posting jobs. It taps a global talent pool, too.

Upwork: A flexible platform that spans more than 150 skills. Used by everyone from small businesses to global enterprises. Strong at IT, development, design, finance and consulting.

Toptal: Focuses exclusively on the top 3% of talent. Best for expert software developers, designers, project managers and finance experts. All contributors are extensively vetted.

Contra: A growing independent platform that vets and connects both job candidates and hiring companies. Best of all, it doesn’t take a commission from projects.

The numbers speak for themselves: businesses engaging freelance professionals report greater confidence and competitiveness, as well as the ability to withstand turbulence, yet legacy beliefs can still cause hesitancy among those keen to hire. Supported by such specialized collaborators, companies can explore new horizons unencumbered by a one-time narrow view of staffing models.