How to Make Extra Money Online as an Amazon Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is another way to make extra money online. Amazon has a great affiliate program called Amazon Associates. Amazon affiliates earn referral fees when someone purchases a product through their link. The referral fee is a percentage of the sale. Amazon offers a flat fee percentage (4%) or a performance-based percentage (4% to 15%) that increases with the number of products sold. The Amazon affiliate program is a great way to supplement Google Adsense earnings.
What is an Amazon Tracking ID for Affiliates
Amazon uses a tracking ID to track product links, orders, and earnings. The Amazon tracking ID is the same as your Amazon Associate ID. The tracking ID has a number at the end (trackingidexample-20). The number is a part of the tracking ID, so make sure to use the whole ID or you wont get credit for anything. Amazon affiliates can make up to 100 different tracking IDs to make it easier to analyze link, website and product performance.
How to Make a New Amazon Tracking ID
Make a new Amazon tracking ID for different websites. The Amazon tracking ID is like an Adsense URL channel, so you can see which site performs the best with Amazon products. You can also make a new tracking ID just to track a specific product, if you are running a campaign. Use the Amazon tracking IDs to optimize your affiliate earnings.
- Log into Amazon Affiliates (www.Amazon.com/affiliate)
- Click "account settings" at the top right of the page.
- Click on the link that says "manage your tracking IDs"
- Make a new Amazon tracking ID for tracking Amazon stats on Seekyt.
- Add your Amazon associate ID in the "edit profile" section of Seekyt.
- Always include the entire tracking ID including the -20 (or whatever yours is) otherwise Amazon sales wont get credited to your account.
Contextual Links - How to Make a Text Link for an Amazon Product
An Amazon product text link is a link that goes directly to the product page. Amazon offers several ways to link to their site. Amazon product text links are one of the easiest links, once you know how to make it. The steps and picture below show you how to make direct Amazon product text links.
Example Amazon product text link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=yourAmazonID-20
- The Amazon Standard Item Number or ASIN is a 10-digit number listed under "Product Details" on all products, including books. Copy the actual number then paste the number over "ASIN" in the link.
- Paste your Amazon tracking ID (aka Amazon associate ID) over "yourAmazonID-20" and that's it.
- Here is the result: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VNCRNQ/?tag=amazonseekr-20
- Add the Amazon product text link to an article just like any other link.
Copy the example link.
I have ready-to-go links for each website that allows me to use Amazon (Seekyt, InfoBarrel, Hubpages, my blogs, and website).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=yourAmazonID-20
I keep pre-made Amazon links on my laptop desktop. When I make an Amazon affiliate link I just swap the ASIN number, copy the new link, paste it into an article, and move on.
Make links for your own reference. Use different Amazon tracking IDs so you know where clicks and links come from then you can optimize articles for Amazon.
Use the ASIN not the ISBN number when you are linking to books because all Amazon products have an ASIN number. The Amazon product text link is only one way to make a link to Amazon products. After using Amazon for awhile you will learn other ways to link. Read the Amazon associates blog for performance tips.
How to Add Amazon Products to an Article with a Contextual Link
I think Amazon is a great place to learn affiliate marketing. Amazon offers affiliates several ways to link to products. I like in-text or contextual links. Amazon text links are easy to make and accepted by most revenue share sites. The following steps to make a
- Make an Amazon product text link as shown above.
- Highlight the anchor text in the article. Anchor text is the words or phrase that make a link (words you want the reader to click on to go to Amazon).
- Click the link icon in the text editor for link pop up box.
- Add the Amazon contextual link in the line that says "URL". Some websites only show the link icon when you highlight a word (aka the anchor text).
- Add a description of the link. When you add a description it will appear when a reader hovers their mouse over the link.
- Click "ok". Make sure the Amazon text link works.
- **Read the terms of service for every site so you don't break the rules. Two important rules relate to the call to action and number of outgoing links. If you use a direct call to action your article may be viewed as spam or purely promotional, it depends on the site. A call to action is when you ask the reader to do something specific, for example "click here" and other wording that asks a reader to leave the site.
Pictures enhance an article and help break up the space. I try to include a picture in my articles, especially when I add an Amazon text link. Put the contextual link near the product image so readers have a visual reference. This can also help increase product clicks and improve your Amazon earnings.
How to Add an Amazon Product to a Seekyt Article
Add Amazon products to increase earnings on Seekyt. Choose Amazon affiliate products that are related to the article topic so they enhance your article and provide value to the reader. When you're ready to add an Amazon product to a Seekyt article:
- Add a contextual product text link (above) or use the Seekyt editor to add Amazon products to an article.
- Copy the ASIN located on the Amazon product page (see above for help finding the ASIN).
- Paste the ASIN in the box next to the words "10 Digit Amazon product ID (ASIN or ISBN-10)". My recommendation is to use the ASIN because Amazon sometimes uses 13 digit ISBN numbers, but they wont track the product link so you lose sales if you choose the wrong ISBN on accident.
- Pick an Amazon product category if you want your article to display an Amazon search box too.
There are several ways to add product links to an article. Experiment with different links, photos, etc., to see what works best for you.
Final Tips for New Amazon Affiliates
- Limit the number of Amazon links and products. Too many links is bad for SEO and can overwhelm the reader. There are studies that show people freeze when faced with too many choices.
- Only link to relevant products.
- Be patient. It takes time to make money with Amazon (and Adsense).
- Write for more than one website to diversify passive income -- Seekyt, InfoBarrel, Hubpages, blogs, and niche sites.
- Learn keyword research and search engine optimization so you can increase earnings and optimize content.
- Don't underestimate Amazon's affiliate earning power. I've made as much as a $47 commission on Amazon.
Please leave a comment if you have questions. 
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20 Comments
I think products are pretty easy to integrate. If you think about it we use products for just about everything we do. Amazon has lots of products!
And yes, I too have heard of people making a lot of money every month via the Amazon Affiliate program. Thanks for the offer of help! I'm sure I'll be taking you up on it from time to time.
It looks like you got the Amazon ads working properly on your Seekyt article to me :) Which part is confusing you? If you want to add more Amazon links than what is offered, you can just use Amazon's built in affiliate linker to create links like you would with your own website (but, not widgets or special code - only links).
The reason you can only add one specific product for now is due to research on Amazon integration - mainly, for those who want to write a product specific ad, or promote a specific product with their article. You're more likely to make a sale off of one optimized product in your article than you are with dozens of links - plus, the dozens of links to Amazon are bad for SEO.
Of course, feel free to do what you want with your articles as long as they continue to abide by the guidelines :)
When I wrote this we didn't have the same Amazon integration. I'll make some edits to it though so it makes better sense! Hubpages is great for Amazon integration.
To clarify (hopefully!) - for text links to any product on Amazon use this link as an example:
www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=your_Associates_ID
Replace the ASIN w/the ASIN of the Amazon product. Leaving the = in the URL, add your affiliate ID. Highlighting the words in the article that you want to link to Amazon, click the link icon on Seekyt and add the URL.
I keep mine to two links per article. That's what I use on InfoBarrel and it works just fine w/o too many outbound links.
For images - Unless things have changed, the easiest thing I found was to go to the image you want to use, right click on the image, click copy image URL, then paste that URL in the Seekyt editor where there's a section for a URL in the picture area. It will add that image to the selection of others that are there. Once I figured that out I saw it's faster than the upload.
Here is an article on patio heaters that uses both Amazon link text and the Seekyt Amazon feature. Maybe it'll help put a visual to the words.
I hope this helps some! I'll edit this article very soon.
We had an image uploader, but since I upgraded our text editor, I had to get rid of the uploader in favor of video buttons and more flexibility for writers. I've tried to add a few but they didn't work quite right. In the future, we definitely will have an upload option with the editor. It will just take some time and research on my end.
@admin: I don't doubt your abilities and I know the site will be better each day :-)
I've edited this article a few times trying to make it easier to understand. I emailed Amazon (when I first started using their affiliate program) because I didn't know how make a link, so it's nice to pass on info I've learned.