Make Money from Your Blog with Amazon Associates

What is Amazon Associates?
Amazon Associates is an affiliate program that Amazon.com has offered for many years, dating back nearly to the company’s inception. The program provides publishers the opportunity to display details for Amazon.com products in many formats (product images, text links, banners, etc.) with special links used for tracking purchases and properly crediting affiliates.
What are the benefits of using Amazon Associates?
Amazon.com has a wide variety of products, ranging from books and CD’s to clothing and computers. Because of the many options available, publishers of widely varying niches are able to find relevant products for linking to as an affiliate.
Furthermore, Amazon.com is well-known and well-established. Most Internet users have at least heard of the company even if they have not previously completed a purchase through Amazon’s website. As such, there is more of a tendency to entrust one’s business with the company.

Are there any drawbacks from using Amazon Associates?
Because Amazon.com offers very competitive pricing on their products, the revenue percentages offered from their affiliate program are somewhat low. For their Classic Plan, a flat 4% commission is paid to affiliates. For their Performance Plan, 4-8.5% is earned per sale depending upon the volume of shipped items for the month. Below is the specific details about the Performance Plan payout scale.

Additionally, Amazon Associates does not pay referral fees on auctions or zShops items as well as items linked on external sites such as Shutterfly.com.
So how do I get started?
After joining Amazon Associates, it’s very easy to get started with the many affiliate opportunities available. Amazon Associates Central provides a simple interface for generating individual product links, context links, omakase links, recommended product links, banner and text links, and product search box code.

Each of the link building tools that allows for linking to specific products provides a quick search feature for locating products that you wish to offer as an affiliate. After finding the products you’re looking for, the tool will provide the HTML code that needs to be pasted into your website.
If you are blogging via WordPress, there is a very easy-to-use plug-in entitled WP-Amazon that even further simplifies the link-building process, condensing everything needed into the WordPress dashboard. It is definitely worth installing if you often intend to publish content with Amazon affiliate links included.
How do I track my earnings?
Amazon Associates includes a very detailed group of reports for tracking earnings, click-through rates, and information regarding specific products purchased completed through affiliate links. Specifically, there is an earnings report, orders report, miscellaneous referrals report, link-type report, daily trends report, and tracking ID summary report accessible through the website. Each report can be displayed for specific date ranges as well.
Affiliates receive payments approximately 60 days following the end of the month. Payments are made via check, direct deposit into your bank account, or by Amazon.com gift certificate. Payments are not made until the amount due is $100 for check payments or $15 for either alternative payment method. It is important to note that Amazon charges a hefty $15 for processing checks (unless outside the US where direct depositing is not an option), so it is to your benefit to utilize one of the other payment methods.