Amazon has now become a reference point worldwide, not only for online purchases but also for services such as Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Music Unlimited. By now, it has become an established habit to at least take a look at the news proposed by the platform founded by Jeff Bezos. Recently, Amazon also proposes some interesting earning possibilities through its affiliate program. In this article, we will illustrate what are the earning possibilities offered by the e-commerce giant.
The trends of Amazon affiliate programs
Before moving on to the operational phase, let's see what are the growth trends of affiliate marketing through the scrolling of data. It is estimated that 15% of the entire media industry's revenue comes from affiliate marketing. As early as 2008, there were about 2 million people enrolled in the Amazon affiliate program and that produced, as of 2015 earnings that exceeded $10 billion. In 2020, the numbers almost tripled, and the trend is still growing
How to earn with Amazon
Amazon affiliation works just like all other affiliate programs. Basically, you get a chance to earn a commission by promoting products offered by others. If you manage to entice other people into buying the products that you on Amazon you are rewarded. The earnings for each item sold through the Amazon affiliate system depends on the commissions applied to the product category in question.
How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program?
To join the affiliate program you need to register with Amazon. Once done, you have to connect to the page of affiliations and register by filling out the form. Once you have entered all the required data, you must then indicate on the screen the websites, applications and social network pages on which you intend to place ads as an Amazon affiliate, including at least one website or social page. Once this is done, we just have to choose an ID to uniquely identify our affiliation. Finally, we need to indicate what kind of items we want to sponsor on our sites.
How to create Amazon product links
Once enrolled in the affiliate program you have the ability to create custom links that enclose our unique affiliate code. This will allow Amazon to understand that the transaction happened because of us. To quickly create a link to Amazon products, enter the name of the product you want to find in the keyword or ASIN/ISBN field found under Quick Links. Next, locate the product on the main page of our account and select the "Go" button. Search for the product we are referring to and click on the down arrow icon to acquire the URL of the product in question including the ID of our patner.
How to Use Amazon Banners in Affiliate Links
For your own affiliations, you can take advantage of the banners suggested by Amazon. To avail this possibility, you click on "Product Link Creation" and choose the "Banners" option from the pop-up menu, after which you opt for the preferred type of banners. The choice is between Promotional Banners (Gift Vouchers and Quick Banners) and Category Banners (Clothing, Books, Watches, Kindle, Music etc.). Finally, choose your preferred size and copy the provided HTML code. You can also use the distinctive banners of Amazon services, such as Amazon Prime, Prime Video and Amazon Music or one of the banners related to promotions and offers.
How to insert Amazon products on your website
After creating the links of the products we are interested in, we continue by inserting the related HTML code into our website. Once you have identified the page or section of the site where you want the products to be displayed, you need to paste the previously copied code. If your website is built with WordPress, Amazon provides the free Amazon Associates Link Builder plugin that allows you to include the products in the web pages of your site easily and without creating any links. After installing and activating the plugin, click on the Associates Link Builder entry in the sidebar on the left and continue with the plugin configuration.
How to track clicks sales and commissions
Amazon gives you the ability to track clicks, sales and commissions via the Amazon Affiliate Center. To view the data you need to log on to the Amazon Affiliate Program site and log into your account. Clicking on the "Earnings Overview" and "Summary" sections will show you the graph to track the status of clicks on the links you have placed, the products that have been ordered and purchased and the earnings of the last 30 days that the Amazon Affiliate Program has provided us.
How to entice people to buy through our recommendations
People will only be enticed to buy what we offer on our personal website or blog if we build a website where we manage to be credible and trustworthy. To do this, it will be enough to write a lot about a certain topic online to be perceived as "experts" increasing our authority, to make people follow our advice. That's why only those who own a personal website can participate in Amazon's affiliate program.
How much do you earn with Amazon affiliations?
To collect what you earn with affiliations, you don't need a VAT number because you don't have to pay taxes if your earnings are not high and lasting. If you start earning substantial amounts of money for several consecutive months, it makes sense to open a VAT number. It depends a lot on the number of visits that you can generate and the quality of the content of our blog. Amazon pays regularly every month by bank transfer.
Earning with Amazon FBA
You can also generate interesting earnings through Amazon FBA. This program involves opening your own business on Amazon. Questo metodo dà la possibilità di vendere i nostri prodotti direttamente attraverso lo store di Amazon, che si occuperà anche dell’imballaggio, del servizio clienti e dello stoccaggio. Quindi non ci resta altro da fare che reperire i migliori prodotti da vendere sulla piattaforma o produrre in prima persona oggetti da mettere in vendita. Ovviamente, Amazon pretenderà una percentuale sul fatturato. Le commissioni non sono uguali per tutti i tipi di prodotto, ma variano dal 7% al 45%.
Amazon FBA come iniziare
L’inscrizione al programma non complicata, è necessario navigare sul sito web di Amazon e fare un account come "Venditore". Una volta immessi i nostri dati, bisogna scegliere il piano più ci si addice. Vi sono due tipi di piani:
- Piano base: è totalmente gratis, pertanto adatto ai piccoli venditori, dato che non si possono vendere più di 40 prodotti al mese. Non tutte le funzionalità più avanzate sono disponibili scegliendo quest’opzione: in ogni caso, è comunque un buon modo per iniziare a vendere oggetti visto che è totalmente gratuita. La commissione che Amazon pretende per ogni vendita è del 15%.
- Piano pro: con questo account i prodotti da poter mettere in vendita diventano illimitati anche se c’è una quota fissa mensile di 39 euro. Non sussistono commissioni fisse per ogni prodotto venduto. Con l’account Pro altri bisogna calcolare altri due costi aggiuntivi: stoccaggio e spedizione. Lo stoccaggio lo si paga per usufruire dei magazzini Amazon e può variare da pochi centesimi di euro fino ad un massimo di 2.94 euro. Per la spedizione l’importo varia da 2 agli 8 euro e dipende dalle dimensioni del prodotto.
Pro e Conto di Amazon FBA
Amazon FBA rappresenta un’ottima opportunità per coloro che hanno già un’attività commerciale e vogliono massimizzare al massimo i profitti ampliando la clientela su Amazon. The cost of €39 is not excessive compared to the advantages it brings including the ability to take advantage of Amazon's logistics system which alone would be worth the price of a monthly subscription. Among the disadvantages, however, is the fact that those who do not have an existing business will have to incur significant expenses to start it.
Amazon FBM as an alternative to FBA
There is an alternative to FBA. We are talking about the Merchant process, or FBM. This service is established for those sellers who prefer to control the entire sales process. By not paying a fixed fee as with FBA, the final profit margins will be higher. With FBM the seller should be able to avoid slowdowns in shipments, give quick answers to problems on orders and have great reviews. For FBM sellers it's very important to limit the expense of shipping, since this part of the business is in the hands of the seller, unlike Amazon which, by handling huge volumes can get discounted prices and deliveries in 24 hours.
Disadvantages of FBM
Of course, FBM is not without its disadvantages. If we have large sales volumes it can be tricky to have an adequate process to handle them all at once. We also need to be able to ensure that our processes are optimized and enforceable on a daily basis so there are no interruptions. In addition, FBM salespeople do not get a free pass to access the Prime category.