If you have ever wanted to start a a blog or website that is monetized by the Amazon Associates program, then I have a few tips that may help you get started.
Or if you currently have a site where you are wondering how to use Amazon affiliate links most effectively or the process of inserting your links using WordPress, I have a few ideas that will make you more money.
I started my online journey with Google Adsense, and that is where I've made a lot of my money in order to quit my job. However, after conducting a few niche site projects, and starting a few other sites on my own, I've learned how to use Amazon affiliate links quite well over the years. In fact over the past couple of months, I've learned some things that I never knew before, and wanted to share.
Making money through affiliate marketing in general can be quite profitable. Promoting Amazon products is perhaps one of the easiest affiliate programs to join and tends to have a great conversion rate because everyone is familiar with buying from Amazon. This can result in higher affiliate commissions for you.
There is nothing more frustrating that having a problem and not being able to find an answer; so, hopefully this post can answer a few basic questions in regards to making money with the Amazon associate program as I teach you how to use amazon affiliate links.
How to Insert and Add Amazon Links
There are a couple of different ways that you can insert Amazon affiliate links on your WordPress or other affiliate sites. First, you can use different options provided directly by Amazon. You can do this with any theme you've picked and some WordPress themes have more ready to use interfaces to allow direct linking from amazon more readily.
Here's a quick summary of the steps needed to get affiliate links directly from Amazon:
- Login to your Amazon Associate Account.
- Find the products you want to promote on Amazon and click the option you want to use in the Amazon Associates site stripe at the top of page.
- Copy the code for the link from the Amazon popup window.
- Paste this link in your blog post, on social media, or other location on your site where you want to promote products.
Here's a bit more in-depth description of how to get your Amazon affiliate links, with images to guide you of course.
If you are logged into your Amazon associates account, you can just visit ANY page on Amazon.com and click the most appropriate option for you in the Amazon Associates SiteStripe at the op of the page. This will give you an affiliate link for that exact page. Here's what it looks like:
As you can see, you can click either Text, Image, Text + Image, or Custom Native Shopping Ads. Finally, you can also share directly on Facebook or Twitter by clicking the Facebook or Twitter icons.
I typically will just select the “Text” option and then highlight just the link code itself (as shown in the image below). Then I can use this affiliate link anywhere I want on my site (with an image, my own anchor text, on social media, or anywhere else I chose). However, you can explore the various link options to determine what works best for you.
All you have to do is copy that link from Amazon, insert it into your website, and you'll start earning commissions whenever people buy products on Amazon through that link.
However, it's important to note that you have the correct Store ID and tracking ID selected. Just be aware that whatever tracking id you select is where the commissions will show up on your earnings report from Amazon.
Another pro tip is to decide if you want to use a short link or the full link (as shown in the image above). I would recommend using the full link if you EVER think you will sell your website. I have purchased and sold a couple of Amazon affiliate websites, and it's MUCH easier to find and replace (using a WordPress plugin) the old Amazon tracking id and replace with the new one when the full link is used. (The short link doesn't show your tracking id, so it's impossible to find).
Custom Options
You can also click the “Custom” link and get an embed code that includes the price, image, description, and buy button. This makes your links more obvious, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your blog post or site that you are using it on.
You can also use several other options that are provided by Amazon directly for creating affiliate links such as inserting banners, product links, and much more. For my own niche sites, I don't typically use any of these other options. See the image below for a few options:
However, you should probably explore these options in your Amazon associates account to determine which type of affiliate links are the best for you to use.
Now that I've covered what Amazon has to offer, I want to share a couple of other tools that can assist in using Amazon affiliate links on your website.
Using the EasyAzon Plugin to Insert Links
Another option for how to use Amazon affiliate links on your site is to use a WordPress plugin (if using WordPress). For many of my niche sites, I am using the EasyAzon Pro Plugin.
The EasyAzon plugin makes it very quick and simple to insert Amazon affiliate links without ever having to leave your WordPress dashboard. So, rather than going over to Amazon.com to find your product and then copy and paste the link, you can have the plugin do it directly for you within WordPress post or page.
Here's an image of the EasyAzon plugin in action:
So, this is located directly below where you create a post in your WordPress text editor. All you have to do is type in your search query (mine is “tom brown tracker knife” above), then hit search. This will pull back all the Amazon results using the Amazon Product Advertising API, as you can see in the image. Using the product advertising API from Amazon ensures that you stay compliant when using images, prices, and other product details.
Then simply select whether you want a text link, image link, info block, or call to action.
I went ahead and selected a “Text Link”, and here is what I get:
In the link text box, you can change your anchor text to whatever you want. You can see that I made it, “Click Here for Pricing, Reviews, and More…”. Then simply clicking “Insert Shortcode” and your Amazon affiliate link is all set!
I like having a custom anchor text because it can increase clicks, which can then lead to more sales.
Other EasyAzon Settings
To first get started with EasyAzon, you will need to input your basic affiliate details. Once you input your Amazon Associate affiliate tag, you can select whether to cloak all links, open links in a new window, make affiliate links “No Follow” and more. Here are the options you can select:
How to More Clicks and Sales from Your International Traffic
You will notice at the bottom of the image above that you can, “Enable Link Localization”. What this does is detect what country the user is from that clicked your affiliate link and direct them to the correct Amazon country page. In order to get paid when a user from the UK purchases on Amazon.co.uk for example, you MUST be approved to the Amazon.co.uk program; which is different than the Amazon.com program.
In other words, you need to apply and be approved for each of the countries for this function to work. Well, it sounded like a lot of time and effort to apply to multiple countries; so I just figured I'd stick with the US only when I first started creating niche sites.
However, I was contacted by one of my readers who told me that it only takes a few minutes to apply to each of these programs, and that it could increase my income by over 15%! To be honest, the only reason I hadn't applied to the other country affiliate programs was because I thought it would be too time consuming.
I was definitely wrong about that!
I've now applied to Canada, UK, and others. I now use the EasyAzon plugin to automatically localize the Amazon results for each person that clicks my affiliate links and I can see that I was missing out on sales from this international traffic.
I mention this in case there is anyone out there just get started with the Amazon Associates program. This is a simple tactic that could definitely increase your overall earnings.
Watch a Full Demo of the EasyAzon Plugin Here
Genius Links
Another great tool to help you monetize traffic coming from all over the world is Geniuslink. Genius is a SaaS based tool that can work with their WordPress plugin or any other type of website.
Genius also acts as a URL shortener, which is how they can track all of your link clicks, where visitors are coming from, and more. Here's what the dashboard looks like in my account:
I use Genius links on a few of my niche sites and have never had any issues. When I look at where my traffic is coming from, you can see that people from 165 countries have clicked on my Amazon affiliate links. So, even though I've applied to the largest Amazon countries, I'm likely still missing out on a little bit of commission each month.
Amazon OneLink
Another option to localize your links is through a relatively new option directly through Amazon called, OneLink. Amazon OneLink does the same thing as the EasyAzon Pro Plugin and GeniusLink; it takes international traffic clicking on your affiliate links and sends them to the appropriate Amazon country (i.e. Amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, etc).
To set up Amazon OneLink, just follow the directions that can be found in your Amazon associates account as shown in the image below:
Where and How to Use Amazon Affiliate Links
Now that you know step by step how to get your Amazon affiliate links, you may still have some questions about exactly where or how to use Amazon affiliate links. Here's some of my favorite places to use my Amazon product links:
- In your blog posts as text links. This might include your WordPress blog, but could also be Tumblr blog, Blogger, Medium Blog, Weebly Blog, or any other blogging platform. The concept of inserting your Amazon text links is essentially the same on each platform.
- In your in-depth “buying guides” that review Amazon products. You can see some great examples of effective use of Amazon links and in-depth buying guides at theWireCutter.com.
- In your WordPress sidebar to highlight a special offer or favorite product.
- Use Amazon native ads or banners strategically placed within your content. Consider used the Ad Inserter WordPress plugin to have the same Amazon native ad show up at the end of each of your blog posts for example.
- In product comparison tables. I recently did an in-depth tutorial of how to create product comparison charts that you might find useful. Or if you are looking for a great software tool that automatically creates great looking Amazon product comparison tables for you, consider the software I created TableLabs.com.
- On Social Media; including Facebook posts, Instagram Posts, and Twitter posts. As mentioned earlier, Amazon has no problem with you posting affiliate links on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, they have the Facebook and Twitter linking tool built right into the Associate SiteStripe. However, I've found that my own experiments with posting links on social media haven't worked that well.
- YouTube. If you are building a following and review products, it's a no brainer to add an affiliate link in your video description. You could even mention a pretty link or other short link in your video that people could type into their browsers.
- Store pages. You can create a “store” page on your website and create your own product listings that are all just your affiliate links. Fresh Store Builder is a tool that makes this SUPER easy and turns out great looking pages.
Pretty Links
If you want to create your own custom affiliate link you can use a free WordPress plugin called Pretty Link. This plugin simply makes really long links short (it's a link shortener). I use Pretty Links all the time. For example, http://ift.tt/2qw0swv, is now my Amazon affiliate link. (Goes to the earmuffs page I was taking screenshots of earlier in this post).
In Conclusion
If you are getting started using the Amazon Assoicates program, hopefully some of these tips I've shared about how to use Amazon affiliate links will be useful to you. Amazon provides lots of different options for inserting links into your site that can be quite helpful.
However, you can also use tools like EasyAzon, GeniusLink, or even Table Labs to help you effectively add links to your site. These plugins and tools allow me to get things done a little bit quicker and provides some advanced options that I may not be able to accomplish otherwise.
Do you have any questions about using the Amazon affiliate program? I'd love to hear your comments or questions below.
The post How to Effectively Use and Add Amazon Affiliate Links to Your WordPress Website appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
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