With 3.7 billion people online searching for physical products’ day and night, there has never been a more exciting time to become an amazon associate, the opportunities are massive and growing exponentially.

In this post, I will lay out in steps how to become a successful amazon affiliate and create an online business from home, promoting amazon products’.

Introduction

The Amazon affiliate program is called amazon and associates or just amazon associates, 40% of all amazons’ revenue comes from affiliate marketing, this is a staggering amount considering what amazon is worth today.

It is in amazons’ best interest to promote and encourage affiliate marketing and so there are ample opportunity’s for affiliates to make a very good living from amazon.

 

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Step 1 Choosing A Profitable Niche

If there is one part of being successful as an amazon associate that will mean the difference between success and failure it’s the selection of your niche.

 

I am aware that following your passion may be tempting and it can work but don’t let this blind you into going down the wrong path when it comes to choosing a profitable niche.

 

The average commission structure for an amazon product is about 6% so that means for a $100.0 product you will earn $6.0 per sale. This can increase if you make a lot of sales and the amazons and associates program has a full list of commissions available to affiliates and associates.

 

Below is a list of commissions available for affiliates, so before you jump into a niche because you are passionate about it take a look at the table below and see what the commissions are.

 

Look Before Your Leap.

 

 

You may be passionate about video game’s and consoles but your commissions for these products are only 1%, I hope this example highlights my point clearly.

How Amazon Associates Get Paid

If someone clicks on one of your affiliate links and lands on amazon you get a percentage of any product they buy for 24 hours, however if they add something to their cart your affiliate link stays live for 30 days.

So if they buy any product in those thirty days you get a commission, even if the product is unrelated to your niche.

Amazon goes to the most extraordinary lengths to improve the conversion rates of their website, and it has spent millions of dollars testing everything so the best strategy is just try to get as many of your visitors to Amazon and they will do the rest.

The secret to affiliate marketing is to promote and not sell, let Amazon do the selling that’s what their good at, if your content is helpful and your product reviews are honest and well written, you will do better than trying to hard sell people.

 

 

 

Amazon spends millions of dollars on improving the way they get people to convert into customers. The fact that they provide a unique customised user experience for every person that goes to Amazon.com based on the buying behaviour and viewing patterns, tells me they know what it takes to close a sale.

Some of the best advice I can give you is to simply find ways to get your visitors onto the Amazon’s web page and they’ll take care of the rest.

 

Choosing Your Niche, Thinking like A Marketer

Getting Specific and becoming the go to expert.

 

 

Niche Levels

Level 1 = Parenting

Level 2 = Parents with young children

Level 3 = Child Car Seats

Try to choose a niche that is at level 3, because it’s extremely difficult to build a parenting website, as the topics it needs to cover are endless. You can’t be an expert in every aspect of parenting.

It’s not that difficult to become an expert in one thing, in this case child car seats.

The big parenting blogs are run by teams of people, covering hundreds of topics, if you are a one man band you will not be able to compete with them.

Successful affiliate marketers are really just problem solvers, they bring together in one place on there website, products and product buyers.

 

 

What Are The Ingredients Of A Profitable Niche?

Hungry Buyers – What this means is that the more pain in the niche the more profit there is, so here is an example.

Niche = Child Car Seats

• Non luxury item, parents will go to any lengths to protect their child, also they are a legal requirement, there is no choice in owning one of these if you want to transport your child in a car.
• Very large hungry audience, there are literally millions of parents all over the world who need a child car seat.
• Item is quite high priced between $50.0 to $300.0. Good commissions.
• Accessories and add-on’s also purchased with these items. More commissions for you.
• There are hundreds of child car seats to write product reviews about, no limit on content you can produce in this niche
• Hundreds of different keywords to rank for

 

The lesson here is, BE SPECIFIC AND RELEVANT TO YOUR CHOSEN AUDIENCE

Understand this one thing and you will be successful at affiliate marketing.

 

 

When someone purchases a child car seat they are buying the outcome and not the product, the outcomes are the safety of their child and compliance with the law.

These outcomes are not optional, to a parent they are an absolute necessity. It’s much easier to persuade someone to buy a child car seat than it is, a game console because there are no negative consequences if your don’t have a games console.

 

In very simple terms, it’s not that difficult to sell hamburgers to hungry people

 

Less Profitable Niche = Watches

CONS

• Luxury Item
• Most people now use there mobile phones instead
• Expensive watches rarely bought online.
• Not that much to write about on your blog.
• Non hungry buyers – No negative consequences if I don’t have a watch.
• No accessories needed.

PROS

• 7% commissions
• Big audience but difficult to tie them down to one watch type and so hard to target particular people.
• Lots of keywords to rank for.
• If you can target buyers for expensive watches then you will get very high commissions, but very expensive watches are very competitive in google search or paid adds

 

Put simply it’s much harder to sell watches than it is to sell car seats, because the car seat niche has pain in it, there are big consequences for not having a child car seat and no bad consequences for not having a watch, the motivation to buy watches is vastly less than the motivation to buy a child car seat.

You can still make money in the watch niche but you must be very specific when targeting your audience.

Conclusion – It’s possible to make money in most niches, it’s just that the more pain in the niche the easier it’s going to be for you to create an online income as an amazon associate. This is why a small percentage of affiliates make most of the money, they follow the hungry buyers.

 

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Step 2 Researching Your Audience

Keyword Research is the first and most important step to start understanding your audience and what it is there looking for, and in addition to this you need to find the low ranking keywords that will help you get you content ranked in Google. You need to understand keyword research to build an affiliate marketing blog.

 

Below is a list of keywords I have found using the jaaxy keyword tool, as can be seen there are plenty of low competition keywords that you can rank for, the QSR or quoted search results indicates the level of competition for each keyword the lower the number the easier it is to rank for.

Under 100 is the best to start ranking a new site and as you produce more content and begin to get trusted by Google you can rank for harder keywords.

The KQI number gives you an indication of how difficult it will be to rank a particular keyword in google.

 

 

This is known as the trickle traffic method, get ranked for very low competition keywords to get some traffic and this will start giving your site momentum as more people visit your site the more trust you will get from Google.

 

Once you have some keyword data you can begin to produce content for your website, this is known as data driven decision–making, to succeed online, you need to produce content that your target market is searching for and serve them with what they want.

 

People looking for “child car seat laws” will also be interested in child car seat reviews so you can internally link one article to another, internal linking is very powerful and really helps with your on page SEO. An internal link to a relevant topic is what Google wants to see.

 

The next step would be to write specific product reviews on different child car seats, so do some more keyword research on specific child car seats and write product reviews on each one. You can also write reviews for child car seats for different ages.

 

Golden Marketing Rule – Be Specific And Relevant To Your Chosen Audience.

 

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Step 3 Creating Content That Converts Visitors Into Buyers

Product reviews are the main stay of affiliate marketing because most people are looking for information on products before they buy and if someone is looking for information on a particular product then they are almost ready to buy that product, so product reviews attract buyers rather than just information seekers.

Product reviews solve a particular problem and they speak directly to your visitor, being helpful and not salesy is the primary aim of your niche website. Write detailed product reviews and answer all the questions your reader may have about the products you are reviewing.

 

Benefits Vs Features

Remember we buy outcomes (benefits) not products, when you write your product reviews focus more on benefits than features.

Example = Child Car Seat

Benefits

• Easy to fit
• Light to carry
• Easy to adjust straps
• Cosy padding providing extra comfort
• 5 Different Positions for seat

Feature

• Suitable for 9 – 12 year old’s
• Range of colours

 

Content structure

Your content needs to be easy to read, and solves the problem that your visitor is looking for, here are eight strategies that will create a good quality post.

1. Small paragraphs throughout.
2. Separate your content with headings H3 or H4.
3. Black or dark text on a plain white background.
4. Speak human as if you were speaking to a friend.
5. Start every post with a captivating headline.
6. Use relevant images throughout your post.
7. At the beginning of your post tell the reader exactly what they are going to get by reading your post.
8. Embed Relevant U Tube video to help explain the topic or product when possible.

Overall keep it simple and just give your reader exactly what they want.

 

Understanding The Buyer Cycle

 

If you understand the customer purchase life cycle and position the right content in front of the right buyers, your conversions will go up.

Before people purchase online they will invest a lot of time seeking information on a particular topic or product, your job is to get your content in front of these people. This is known as the research phase of the buyer cycle.

You can influence the decision of a prospective buyer with detailed reviews, the effective amazon associate can showcase a certain product that is relevant to the buyer and encourage a decision to purchase the product.

The great benefit of being an amazon associate is the prospective buyer will often purchase more than one product on their visit to Amazon.

Amazon have perfected the art of encouraging people to buy more products by showcasing other relevant products and making the whole process of online shopping as easy as possible for all their customers.

Let amazon do the selling, just send as many people to Amazon as possible via your site.

 

Understanding Buyer Keywords

 

Child car seats – Level 1 = Initial research phase

Child car seat for 9 to 12 year old – Level 2 = More specific research phase

Maxi Cosi Titan Toddler car seat – level 3 = Ready to buy

Your product review needs to target the level 2 and level 3 keywords, as the research cycle goes deeper the more likely the person is ready to make a buying decision.

Title of your product review needs to attract the person in the buying stage of the cycle.

 

 

 

Post Title Example – Maxi Cosi Titan Toddler Car Seat Review

The buyer keywords are also less competitive and easier to rank for than the general keywords and you will only get the people who are interested in exactly what you are reviewing.

Over time, you can internally link to other child car seat reviews in that specific group giving your visitor more value and choice.

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Step 4 Building Your Websites Using WordPress

 

I would highly recommend using wordpress for the following reasons;

1. It’s completely Free.
2. It can be installed on your domain with one click within most hosting platforms.
3. It’s designed as a blogging platform which is exactly what you need to be successful as an Amazon Associate.
4. It can be styled in the manner of your choice with thousands of free themes.
5. You can add extra functionality with thousands of FREE wordpress plugins.
6. It’s user-friendly.
7. Google rates it highly.
8. There are thousands of FREE training videos about wordpress on U Tube.
9. It’s kept up to date on a regular basis.

 

Recommended wordpress plugins to get your site up and running as an amazon associate

• All In One SEO – FREE
• Easy Azon Lite – FREE
• EasyAzon Pro – $47.0
• EWWW Image Optimiser – FREE
• Tiny MCE Advanced – FREE
• Contact Form 7 – FREE

The EasyAzon Plugin

 

 

The EasyAzon plugin was developed specifically for the Amazon Associate and will make your life a lot easier, it essentially adds the ability to create all sorts of extra functionality for your Amazon product reviews and content, it will help you increase your conversions.

The EasyAzon plugin allows you to insert product information and affiliate links into your content without having to mess around with pasting code into your text or images. You can also incorporate a product information grid.

I would recommend installing the free version first, see if it is right for you then upgrade to pro if your serous about becoming a successful amazon associate. From the research I have done it seems to be very popular with affiliates.

Amazon is always innovating to increase its business activity. They have developed this plugin to help affiliates be more successful so I think its worth using this plugin.

Should I Create An Amazon A Store On My Site

From the research I have done the short answer is “no”, remember your website is really an information gateway and people have come to your website looking for information and not to shop.

An Amazon a store is for shopping and not reviewing or research, so on the whole your visitors are in the research phase of the buying cycle, let Amazon do the selling because that’s what they are good at and it just less work for you.

There is a very old saying in business – Get really good at one thing.

Conclusion

Success with Amazon And Associates will require you becoming aware of what your audience is looking for and serving them what they want.

The most successful Amazon Affiliates focus on getting to know the people they are marketing to and arm them with the information they are looking for to make a buying decision.

If you have any questions on Amazon Associates then I would only be too happy to answer them, I always respond to any questions you may have, so please let me know if there is anything you need to know in the comments section below.