How to Make Money Blogging with Amazon Affiliate Program!

by max on Monday, March 9th, 2009

Well, today let me give you a little insight into how you can make money blogging with Amazon’s affiliate program.

I have been steadily increasing my income by mixing in relevant Amazon products into my blog posts. (not on this blog)

This guide is really for newbies out there who have no idea what Amazon affiliate program is or simply don’t know how to optimize your Amazon campaigns.

To start out, go sign up for an Amazon affiliate account here.

Once you sign up, you are ready to begin.

There’s bunch of widgets, banners, and whatnot, but I have found it’s better to directly link to each product and blog about it.

Find your affiliate ID, which will end in -20. For example, mine is zedomax-20. You can also make more affiliate IDs for tracking different blogs and products.

Now, go find a product you want to sell, let’s say you want to sell this iPod Touch, which the URL is:

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPod-touch-1st-Generation/dp/B0012JCYPC/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1236632820&sr=8-1

Now, here comes the fun part. Instead of using the Amazon redirect function, just add your affiliate tag like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPod-touch-1st-Generation/dp/B0012JCYPC/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1236632820&sr=8-1&tag=zedomax-20

You will notice that &tag=zedomax-20 has been added to the end of my Amazon URL.

You can also verify if your URL is working by using Amazon’s link verification tool.

Here’s an example of a sentence in a review post:

iPod Touch on Amazon

That’s it, just make sure to link any keywords or product reference to your Url with the affiliate ID added.

Why use direct linking?

This is great for SEO since you are linking to the actual Amazon product URL. If you use URL shorteners such as CozyURL, it won’t be as effective for SEO.

All you have now left to do is search for products on Amazon that could be helpful to your readers and write a review of it.

The beauty of Amazon affiliate program is that you get paid commissions even on products you didn’t link to but went through your affiliate ID. In other words, if someone clicks on my iPod Touch link and goes to Amazon but buys a Sony Walkman, you will still get paid commission on the Sony Walkman.

Next time, I will show you how to carefully watch your Amazon affiliate commission growth. Make sure to subscribe to my blog and get the latest on internet marketing!