It’s simpler than you may think in becoming an Amazon affiliate or for any other types of products. There are many benefits to becoming an Amazon affiliate or affiliate marketer, besides the monetary value, but becoming a better digital marketer in overall.

Because doing affiliate marketing, you’ll be doing things like SEO, content marketing, email marketing, building a website, copywriting, and much more skills – in which you honed in the process.

Hence, there’s plenty of upsides and benefits when it comes to become an affiliate marketer.

What is affiliate marketing?

You may think of it as a referral program, but it happens digitally.

An affiliate or associate marketing programs like Amazon’s are basically arrangements in which an online merchant like Amazon pays affiliate websites a commission to send them traffic and/or sales.

Affiliate sites link to the merchant site and are paid according to the program’s agreements.

Amazon’s affiliate program, for example, pays affiliate sites based on the number of people they send to Amazon who also make purchases on the site within 24 hours.

No doubt it is a win-win scenario in affiliate marketing for both the merchant and participating affiliates.

For the merchant, it’s an opportunity to go beyond their reach and increase sales through affordable marketing. Because affiliate marketing is performance-based, and affiliates are paid only when the desired action takes place and conversion happens.

For affiliates, an associate marketing program enable them to monetize a website, blog, social media, and earn a commission without having to involve in the hassle of setting up or maintaining an ecommerce store.

How does affiliate marketing works?

In a nutshell, become a company’s affiliate partner, and you’ll be given an dedicated affiliate link to promote your chosen company’s product.

And if anyone uses your link to purchase something for the company’s site, you’ll get a fraction of a commission from the sale.

3 general types of affiliate marketing

1. Pay-per-sale

In this type of program, the merchant pays an affiliate when the affiliate sends a customer who makes a purchase. Some merchants pay the affiliate a fixed rate per sale while others, like Amazon, pay a percentage of the sale.

2. Pay-per-click

In this arrangement, the affiliate is paid based on how many visitors arrive at the merchant’s site via the affiliate link, and the affiliate is paid regardless of whether visitors make a purchase.

3. Pay-per-lead

This type of program pays affiliates based on the number of visitors to the merchant’s site who sign up as leads or fill out the requested information on the website.

3 common types of products that you can market as an affiliate marketer

1. Physical product

Physical product is something you can touch and feel, it’s tangible.

It is one of the easiest way that you can start promoting it online. Why? Just like hopping onto Lazada or Zalora – people are buying them all day. Think of the last time you bought something from Lazada.

But the downside of physical product is they give out the least commissions, it’s because the shipping fees and usually have a smaller margin.

2. Digital product

Digital product is something you can’t touch or feel it physically. Some examples are courses, e-books, informational products, website templates, etc. Basically, they’re intangible.

The thing about digital product is they provide you a higher commissions, it’s because there is no added cost for the seller to sell extra for digital products.

Imagine selling the first 10 products or the 1000th product, there is no extra cost to do so for a seller.

Hence, the seller is able to share a larger part of their margin with you.

3. Software product

Software is a something attractive to affiliate marketers because it often bring you recurring income.

One example is ClickFunnels. It is a page building software that’s used widely among marketers globally. (*disclaimer we don’t use it).

And ClickFunnels pays up to 40% of month recurring commissions and this normally happens with softwares.

As long as the someone that you refer continues to use the software month after month, you’ll be enjoying the recurring monthly commissions. (passive Ka-ching!)

However, softwares are one of the toughest thing to promo among this 3 types of product. Because you have to be an user of the software you’re promoting and understand how it works.

Becoming an Amazon affiliate partner

Now that you know how affiliate marketing works, let’s look into one of the largest retailer’s affiliate program in the world – Amazon.

Amazon’s affiliate program, also known as Amazon Associates, is an affiliate marketing program that allows users to monetize their websites, blogs or social media.

Amazon affiliate users simply insert links to Amazon products on their site, and when a customer makes a purchase via one of their links, the user receives a commission.

Amazon Associates is essentially a referral program that pays a commission to referring websites. So when you send a customer to Amazon via a link on your website, you get a percentage of the sale of whatever they purchase over the next 24 hours.

Your commission varies though depending on what type of item a customer purchases. Refer to the chart below to see what Amazon’s fixed standard program fee rate is for various product categories.

It’s important to be aware that the percentage of sale you receive or click through rate (CTR) isn’t the only factor contributing to your commissions. Your conversion rate also matters, because it proves the amount of users clicks and made a purchase after visiting your site.

The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who make a purchase via your affiliate link out of the total number of visitors to your site.

For example, if during the month of December, your website receives 5,000 visitors and 10 of those visitors made a purchase after clicking on your affiliate link, that would be a conversion rate of 0.2 percent.

The average affiliate conversion rate is 0.5 percent to 1 percent. However, some affiliates regularly have much higher conversion rates.

Estimating your potential Amazon affiliate profits can be tricky and involves more than just your conversion rate and Amazon’s fee rates.

It’s about the timing of your customer too, because you get a percentage of everything a customer buys from Amazon within 24 hours of when they arrive at Amazon.com from an affiliate link, there’s also the potential to earn more revenue from products that you don’t specifically advertise.

For example, if you run a beauty blog that features affiliate links to luxury beauty items, which have a fee rate of 10 percent, you may get 10 percent of the purchase of a high-end moisturizer, but also 8 percent of the cost of a box of dog treats if the customer also purchases biscuits.

Some important points to keep in mind:

1. To earn a commission from Amazon purchases, a customer must place an order within 24 hours of arriving at Amazon from your affiliate link.
2. Think of 24-hours windows or chunks. If the customer returns to Amazon via one of your affiliate links, a new 24-hour window opens, and you’ll again be eligible to earn fees based on the customer’s order. If a customer arrives at Amazon from one of your affiliate links, adds an item to their shopping cart and leaves Amazon without completing their order, it’s still possible for you to earn a percentage of that sale. As long as the item was added to the shopper’s cart within that 24-hour window, you’ll receive the referral fee if the order is placed before the shopping cart expires, which is typically 90 days.
3. What if the 24-hours window closes? What if the 24-hour window closes or if the customer re-enters Amazon through another affiliate’s link? Well, unfortunately, you won’t earn any fees from subsequent purchases.

How to be successful in affiliate marketing?

1. Find a niche

Not just any niche, a niche that you’re passionate about, a niche that you can excel and be good at.

And to find a mini niche within a niche. For example, if you’re into the Yoga niche, you may want to zoom into a mini niche like Yoga for pregnant moms or Yoga for working professional.

So, find a niche that you can zoom down and be really specific who your target audience or persona is.

2. Build content

After finding your niche, build content around your niche.

Think about the types of content you consume on a daily basis – whether it’s on social media platform or search engines.

And normally we consume content is to solve problems. We Google for solutions – that would teach us how to solve a problem.

Another reason we consume content is because we’re bored and we want to be entertain or learn something new. (think about the last time you scrolled FB)

3. Build an audience list

When you create a new piece of content, think about how you’re going to promote it each time.

And with an established audience list, it provides you access to reach out to people who potentially wants ot hear from you.

So an audience list is a list of people you can reach out to at anytime – and of course you’ll have to provide value to them.

So one way to build an audient list is to have opt-ins on your website.

Bonus tip: Localize your Amazon affiliate link in Malaysia or anywhere else you’re in.

For example in the above video, watch 10:20 onward to find out how you can do it.

Why localizing your affiliate link?

By localizing your links you will be able to redirect your visitors to the Amazon stores in their respective countries.

For example, if your visitor is from the UK and you have an Amazon associates link for the US amazon website, whenever the visitor clicks your link, he or she will be redirected to the UK amazon website instead of the US one.

This is possible only if you localize your Amazon links.

Now, what happens when a visitor from Canada or the UK visits your website and clicks on the same link?

He or she too will be taken to the same page on the Amazon US website. And that’s the problem.

Why?

The reason being most sellers on the US Amazon website don’t ship internationally and you lose a potential sale.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a total beginner learning to become an affiliate marketer – read this full guide right now.

Affiliate marketing is a long-term game of content promotions. And you can choose to do it passively or actively, but one thing for certain it generates a form of passive income if it’s done right.

I hope this post would get you started with your affiliate marketing venture. If you have any questions, just leave them down below in the comment section.

If you like to learn and build your affiliate marketing business systematically, Affiliate Marketing Profit Core is one of our online course will equip with strategies that you can use to maximize your profits, with instructor support. Do check it out now!