amazon associate mastery

The Art Of Amazon Associate Selling

A Few Facts On Amazon Associate Selling

As an Amazon Associate, you can earn up to 10% on ALL products sold on Amazon through your link, which doesn't sound much on paper but here are the facts:

  1. Everytime customers buy through your link, you make a commission on EVERY item they buy within a 24 hour period. For example, if your site is promoting gym equipment and your customer buys free weights PLUS a plasma TV PLUS kitchenware, you would get commission on ALL those items. Even if they don't purchase gym equipment and end up purchasing something different within that 24 hour period, you would still get commission on those unrelated items! The 24 h0ur period will begin EACH TIME your customer clicks on your link (provided that the previous 24 hour period has expired).
  2. You have the marketing power of Amazon behind you! Amazon invests millions into marketing and persuading customers to buy from them. Customers are always retargeted to return to Amazon through their ads. You always see Amazon ads on random websites you visit after you have left their site. These are ads are designed to follow people around on other sites they visit after they left Amazon, to remind them to return and complete the purchase of the items they were checking out earlier. This means that even if customers don't purchase immediately, Amazon are hard at work trying to get them to return, increasing your chances of making that commission!

Here is a good example of an Amazon Associate site:

http://thebestelectricsmoker.com/

This site is able to make $1,000's in passive income every month and at this stage it can continue to do so without much maintenance as it is firmly established. I shall refer this as the AA site example. I've provided this site as an example for you to see, follow and emulate as you go through the guide below. Try to emulate as close as possible so that you have fundamentals in place, you can always change aspects later to suit your own style!

I am going to show you below how you can build your own Amazon Associate site that makes you passive income EVERY MONTH!

Let's begin!

Picking The Right Product To Promote

Amazon sells anything and everything so you're not lost for choice. But here are some tips to consider when picking the right products to sell.

1. Avoid items less than $50! Unless you're able to sell in massive volumes, I would avoid these since you won't be making much from commission.

2. Pick items that are proven sellers. Most Amazon products have ratings and comments from previous customers. This means that these products have proven to sell and the more ratings/comments there are, the more likely that you are able to sell them. Also the rule of thumb here is - ratings/comments account for roughly 10% of overall sales. In other words, if an item has 20 ratings/comments, then more than likely 200 customers have bought it. This isn't an exact science but a good indicator to abide by.

3. Pick items that you can find tons of information on. The amount of information available will give an indication of a) the size of the customer base and b) the amount and level that you are able to discuss/review the item. The more articles, groups and videos that you can find on the item, the easier it is for you to talk about and find a customer base for.

The more articles, groups and videos that are available on the product, the easier it is for you to talk about and find a customer base for.

To illustrate the above, I will use GoPro as an example.

GoPro's are listed on Amazon from $100 to $800. There are plenty of GoPro's listed with tons of reviews/comments and ratings. With a simple Google and YouTube search, I can find tons of articles, reviews and videos on GoPro and how people use them for various activities. There is a proven ready-made audience that I can target and plenty of things that I can talk about in my articles and reviews. To me, GoPro would be the perfect item for me to build my Amazon Associate site around!

Preparation For Your Site

You will need the following:

  • Amazon Associate ('AA') account
  • Domain name
  • Web host
  • Web theme

You will need an AA account relative to your country, simply Google AA and follow the instructions for opening an AA account for whichever country you're in.

You will need a domain name that's relevant to the product you're selling. Using the GoPro example, I would have the following list of ideas:

  • www.goproexpertise.com
  • www.wealllovegopro.com
  • www.funthingswithgopro.com
  • goproknowledgebase.com

Ideally you would want .com or a domain relative to where you're from (co.uk if from UK). I would recommend GoDaddy for buying domains only but not for web hosting. Try out and experiment with a few domains. 

Web Hosting

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND JVZoo Hosting as your provider. I have tried many hosts but for an AA site, JVZoo would be the best option as it's simply tailored-made to handle websites build for marketing and affiliate purposes. Other sites such as GoDaddy wouldn't be enough to handle large visitors without crashing and if your sites crash, you will lose visitors and sales. GoDaddy, Bluehost and HostGator etc would be fine if you're looking to build small simple blogs but we're looking to build and grow an AA site to generate passive income every month so we're looking for a web host specific to our needs. I've used JVZoo Hosting to run several of my AA sites within the same account and they've all run smoothly even when I receive a large influx of visitors. 

I highly recommend the Gold package as you will need the space and memory to handle the visitors on your site.

Click the image below to visit JVZoo Hosting!

 
Web Themes

I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND you visit ThemeForest as they have the largest library of web themes available. I think the most important aspect of any theme is the support availability and ThemeForest's support is top notch! There will be times when you're working on your website, you may need to ask support for something and their help is very prompt and concise. Web themes from other sites are fine (I've tried most of them!) and support can be fine. However I find that other sites don't provide as much choice for themes and support isn't as good, some do charge for support on top of the theme. I would DEFINITELY stay away from free themes as you are never getting as good quality, you only get very basic and extremely limited features and most of the time you will need to pay for support anyway!

Simply pick whichever theme you like!

Click the image below to visit ThemeForest!


A step-by-step guide in putting the website together would be overly long to describe in this course, in which case I would contact support as they would be able to provide more concise guidance. I will however provide a quick list below of what you need to do:

  • Contact JVZoo Hosting and ask them how to point your domain purchased from GoDaddy onto their servers
  • Ask JVZoo how to install Wordpress and create an admin account to log in
  • Contact support for the theme you purchased from ThemeForest and ask how to install their theme

In terms of working with Wordpress basic features, it is very simple to learn. You can simply find Wordpress videos on YouTube to get to grips with the basics. Remember to contact hosting or theme support if you have other technical issues!

And remember to use the AA site example as guidance on how to build your site and what categories and content to add.

Once you have set up the basic features, I would recommend adding a banner to make your site stand out and look more professional. I recommend visiting https://www.canva.com/create/banners/ to create your free banner!

Content

The aim of your content is to entice and interest your visitors and to eventually persuade them to click through your links and buy your promoted products, and to ideally visit your site on a regular basis to buy more products.

You need to ask yourself "what would my audience be interested to know about the products?", then cater your content towards those needs.

Even if you know nothing about the product, some simple research will guide you in the right direction. You'd be surprised how much you can learn about a product with Google and YouTube! You can find tons of content by other people on any product available!

Other peoples' content can give you ideas of things you can discuss. Some simple questions can lead you to areas that you may want to cover:

  • Is it something that can be used for fun? Where and how can it be used?
  • Is it only for emergencies? What are the consequences if they don't buy one?
  • Is it expensive? Why is it and what's the value?
  • What maintenance will it require?
  • Lists/countdowns - e.g. the top 10 best/worst [insert your product]

For GoPro, I would add content to cover:

  • The best sports for using GoPro
  • The funniest things you can do with GoPro
  • Most extreme videos shot with GoPro
  • Most funniest videos shot with GoPro
  • GoPro maintenance
  • Top 10 best/worst GoPro's of all time

Also use the AA site example as inspiration for categories/content to cover.

Promoting Your Product

Remember that your contact is about providing interesting and educating the reader but also about promoting the product and making a sale.

The easiest way to do this is tailor the content to suit the sale. For example, if you write an article for "GoPro's suitable for snowboarding", you write a few paragraphs about this area, add a video of snowboarding with a GoPro, then add a link at the bottom with the sentence "Like this? Check out the GoPro designed for snowboarding in the link below". The link will then take the reader onto the GoPro page on Amazon. Of course this is just one example; you can do this in so many ways. You can use hyperlinks, add buttons and images and convert them into links to the Amazon page. Simply Google to find out how to do this.

Be careful with using images though. The simple rule is you're allowed to use images from Amazon to place onto your site but I wouldn't use images beyond Amazon. 

Connecting With Amazon

At this stage if you have an AA account then you would have access to affiliate links on any page. When you are logged into the AA account, every Amazon page you visit will display a product affiliate link or you will be able to create one. Simply choose the product you wish to promote then grab the affiliate link and place onto the article/review/blog on your site.Again you can add the link onto a clickable text, button or image - simply Google how for instructions.

Your Amazon Associate Store

Once you have completed the above steps, you should now have a fully functioning Amazon Associate store - congratulations!

You are now ready to receive visitors and make sales!

Now when visitors click on your links, you will make commission on ALL their purchases within a 24 hour period. And when they come back and click again, the 24 hours start again - which means even more commissions from the same visitor!

Sometimes visitors will end up buying unrelated items. So if you sell GoPro's but your visitor buys a desk and chair instead, then you will receive commission on those items! On many occasions I have received commission for beds, lamps, tables and car parts even though I don't promote them!