Getting Started With The Awesome Amazon Affiliate Program (And An Amazon Affiliate Program Review)

I love the Amazon affiliate program.

It helped changed my life from wanting to work online to earning a full-time income.

This happened even though I lived in a country that didn’t have Amazon (until very recently).

I have worked with many different affiliate programs but it’s hard to find ones that convert as well as Amazon. So if you mention products at all on your blog, I strongly suggest you give it a go!

With the Australian Amazon affiliate program recently opening, I feel like this is an extra good time to talk about how to become an Amazon affiliate since there are many Australian bloggers out there who have had to wait until now.

The Amazon affiliate program Australia is also something I have been waiting (impatiently) for years. It’s good that we finally have a great affiliate option down under and hopefully, it encourages more companies here to start their own affiliate programs.

Click here for a FREE Cheat Sheet for getting started with Amazon!

In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through my Amazon affiliate program review including how to get started with the Amazon affiliate program. If you are already an affiliate and looking for tips for making more money from Amazon, read my 5 monster tips here.

If you want a general overview to starting with affiliate marketing, you can find it here.

1. What is the Amazon affiliate program?

Amazon is the world’s biggest retailer and their online stores are extremely popular in many different countries. The Amazon affiliate marketing program allows influencers to earn a commission based on any sales they refer – just like any other affiliate marketing program.

The commission percentage varies depending on the country and the category the product belongs too. You can find the US commission rates here and the Australian ones here. The Australian Amazon affiliate program is more generous than the others I have used which is a bonus.

2. Amazon affiliate program review

I have had great success with Amazon US especially as well as good numbers in Amazon Canada, UK and some success in the rest of Europe. So I am a big fan.

It’s easy to use Amazon as an affiliate and people in many countries love them. The biggest problem is that for each country where you want to earn commissions, you need to set up a separate Amazon account.  Amazon does not link the accounts.  Neither does Amazon make payment easy, only offering cheques to affiliates who don’t have a local bank account.  This may, however, be changing – with news that Amazon US are paying directly into non-US bank accounts and this may spread to other Amazons.

In the meantime there are ways around the cheques. I use Transferwise to receive payments. It’s very fast and the currency exchange fees are very low. I love it!

The other issue with Amazon affiliates for multiple countries is that you need different links for products for different countries. So if you want to earn as an Amazon affiliate for different countries you’ll need to set up links for each country.  Thankfully, EasyAzon makes this easy and will automatically make links redirect to the right country.

In order to use plugins like EasyAzon it is necessary to have access to the Amazon API which is only granted when you account is verified (you need to make 3 sales in each country to get access to the API for each country).

New rules in January 2019 from Amazon require that you must generate at least one sale in each country and in each 30 day period to retain access to it for those countries.  If you lose access to the API and want to get it back, then you will need to replace links with the Onelink script until you generate sales and regain access to the API.

Amazon now offers a service called “OneLink” where they do the link localisation.  Note that if you use OneLink, it only works for text links and not other types. It also does not give you the option to manually set where you want each link to go for each Amazon store which is highly useful.  It is also necessary to ensure you create your links, if using OneLink from the Amazon US site and I recommend using the long, not shortened links.

You can watch some videos on how to use EasyAzon here.

Note the Amazon Australia affiliate program is not covered by OneLink at the time of publishing this tutorial.

All of this can be annoying but the upside is that at least Amazon does cater somewhat to an international audience which is lacking with the vast majority of retailer affiliate programs.

Some bloggers do avoid Amazon because they can get higher commission rates from others and a longer cookie duration (meaning you have longer after someone clicks your link before they buy with you earning the commission).

However, I have found other companies just do not convert as well as Amazon. Amazon is so damn good at getting people to buy something, even if it’s not what you originally referred them to. You still get a commission for anything they buy.

This is the HUGE positive with Amazon. People. Just. Buy.

Plus, it’s a well-known brand so there are no issues with trust.

Australian Amazon affiliate program

Although I could rave all day about the Amazon affiliate programs in other countries, the Amazon Australian program is not as good as yet.

This isn’t because the terms aren’t as good – the commission rates are great. However, it’s just not used by Australians much yet and the range and prices on there are not good. I’m finding my conversion rate (how many people buy versus how many people I refer) is TERRIBLE.

I expect this will change as Amazon invests in their Australian operations as there is a big hole in the market for an online retailer like Amazon. And, even with terrible commissions, I’m still going better as an Amazon affiliate Australia than other Australian affiliates because there are just so few options.

3. How to be an Amazon affiliate

It’s easy to get started as an Amazon affiliate. It’s as simple as signing up for each program. You can find the sign up for the US here and Australia here.

You will need to give some personal information, some business information and may need to fill in a tax form. On the US site, everyone needs to fill in a tax form, on other sites it varies.

You also need to give information about each site you will promote Amazon on. To get paid, you will need to fill in the payment information as well. You will need to create a tracking ID that will be on all your links.

Signing up is fast and then you can start creating your links straight away.

Amazon does not approve affiliates until they make a few sales. Then they may do a manual check of your site. Some of the country programs, like the US, require three sales in six months or they shut your account.  As of January 2019 access to the API to allow usage of plugins like EasyAzon requires ongoing sales of 1 per country per month.

If you lose access to the API and want to get it back, then you will need to replace links with the Onelink script until you generate sales and regain access to the API.

Click here for a FREE Cheat Sheet for getting started with Amazon!

In the following video, I show you how to sign up for the Amazon Australia affiliate program. All the others are just small variations on this so you will find it useful regardless of the program you join.

4. How to use Amazon affiliate links

Once you have your account, you can get started with affiliate links straight away.

In the following video, I show you how to use Amazon affiliate links in both the Australian and US programs. I also give you a quick overview of the reporting.

If you want to see how easy it is to create links with EasyAzon for Amazon that localise to the correct Amazon country depending on where your readers are, you can find that information here.

5. Keeping to Amazon’s affiliate program terms

Amazon has some strict program terms and, annoyingly, it’s not always clear what they are and exactly what to do to meet them. I have tried on multiple occasions to talk to their support and they have just directed me back to the terms rather than helping me understand them.

If you break their terms of service, you can be removed from their program and they may not pay outstanding amounts.

Some things I recommend you do:

• Never mention the price of products unless you are getting the price live from Amazon
• Do not copy any text from the Amazon site including product ratings
• Have the full Amazon disclaimer on every page with Amazon links (you can see the exact wording in their program terms)
• Do not use Amazon links anywhere except where you are allowed (for example, you can’t put them in email or ebooks)

Click here to download my FREE Cheat Sheet for getting started with Amazon!

6. How to make money with the Amazon Affiliate Program

If you are wondering how to do affiliate marketing with Amazon and really have success, I recommend you read my article about my 5 monster tips for making more money with Amazon.

Amazon is so good at getting people to buy that just getting your readers to Amazon can make money.

However, if you really want to have big success with affiliate marketing, you need to use a proven strategy and describing how to do that is hard in just one blog post.

That is why I have a full course dedicated to teaching you how to make money with affiliate marketing where I teach you exactly how to make money with affiliate marketing.

You can sign up here.

Final words

I am a huge fan of the Amazon affiliate program because it is so easy to use and so easy to make sales.  Overall, for me, my Amazon affiliate review is overwhelmingly positive.

I am so excited that they are finally in Australia and I hope this starts to change how backward we are when it comes to affiliates in this part of the world.

I also have a full guide to how to use Amazon to make money including details of all the Amazon changes in 2018 and 2019 here. I recommend you read it!

If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, I highly recommend you read my full guide here. You can also find more posts on making money from blogging here.

I look forward to teaching you everything I know about affiliates!

Click here for a FREE Cheat Sheet for getting started with Amazon!