How to set up amazon affiliates in five easy steps to create an additional stream of income for bloggers, physical therapists, website owners, and other innovative women who want to create as many money trees as possible to diversify risk and create wealth.
This post contains affiliate links, please see my disclaimer for more information.
I began my amazon affiliates journey in 2017 when I created my website as an additional stream of income. I learned everything I know through google searches and trial and error. This isn’t a fully encompassing article, so make sure to read up on Amazon Affiliate’s terms and conditions just to make sure you’re fully informed.
5 Things To Know Before Becoming An Amazon Affiliate
It’s best if you have a website set up first.
You will need to make a commission in your first three months in order to formally be accepted into the Amazon Affiliates Program. These links need to be utilized through an online platform (more on this later) and cannot be utilized via text, email, or pdfs.
Having a website to send someone to will ensure that you are within compliance on the terms and conditions as well as make it easier for you to continue to create additional streams of income.
You must utilize a disclaimer on each post that utilizes affiliate links
You must utilize a disclaimer to inform anyone who would click on the link that you may have a vested interest in whether or not they buy. This is a requirement from the Federal Trade Commission. Per Amazon’s Affiliate Agreement, “on your Site or any other location where Amazon may authorize your display or other use of Program Content: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
You can utilize links on social media sites with the same disclaimers
While you can utilize these links with a disclaimer as the one above or in my research with #ad or #advertisement notifications in the actual post (not comments) having a website is more professional and overall longer-lasting (aka less work and lives longer).
You can also utilize these affiliate links in your Youtube descriptions
Have a youtube channel? Make sure to add in the affiliate links to your equipment, products you talk about in your videos, and other favorites. Again, you will need the disclaimer for FTC requirements. Make sure to add any additional disclaimers in the description: medical, legal (general information/liability release), or financial that may be needed to cover all bases!
Check out kit.co as a “whole shop” option if you don’t meet the “influencer shop” requirements.
Kit.co is a website that allows you to categorize amazon affiliate links for free. They also use universal links so that if/when you sign up for other countries amazon affiliate accounts (haven’t done this yet!) it will automatically change the link to the person’s country based on the IP address.
What is the influencer shop? It’s the Amazon Influencer Program, which you have to enroll in and be approved by. While Amazon hasn’t said exactly how many people you need to have as followers to have this it is a different style of shopping (instead of having direct links to products it’s more like visiting a storefront). This article does a great job breaking down the differences.
Here’s How To Set Up Your Amazon Affiliate Account
Create an Amazon Account for the email address you’d like to use.
This one is pretty easy. Create an Amazon Account, pick a password, and verify your email.
2. Create an Amazon Affiliate Account
Go to the Amazon Affiliate Account website and enter your information including address, website information (all websites that will be utilized including: facebook url, instagram url (if over 10k), website, kit.co, pinterest accounts, etc. Basically literally anywhere you’d post this link you could possibly think of.
You will also be able to choose your amazon affiliates name, it doesn’t really matter what your name is, but it might be helpful if you run multiple affiliate accounts so I would name it according to your brand or website. Mine is girlsquadfit-20 because that just was what was available.
3. Add in your bank account information
You typically get paid two months after a purchase is made, on a varying percentage of a product that is bought through your link & anything else in the cart, as long as the purchase is made within 24 hours of the click AND they didn’t click on anyone else’s affiliate link prior to the purchase.
Twenty four hours isn’t a ton of time, but the hope is that people realize that the convenience of coming to your site is much easier than searching for that product on their own. For example, I suck at house decor but Ashley at Joyfully Growing is amazing at it. She posts insanely awesome home decor finds from amazon and other places on her website so I ALWAYS go there to “refind” that cute throw pillow cover I wanted to buy.
Then she gets credit off my purchase & I’m happy that she found something cute and I didn’t have to look at all (just read her blog/email/instagram).
Note: You will receive a 1099 and have to pay taxes if your affiliate account reaches greater than $600.
If you ever need to update anything you can find that in the settings section pictured below.
4. set up your “site stripe”
Site stripe is a banner that pops up when you click on Amazon.com while on a web browser. Site Stripe is located in the “settings” and then down near the bottom on the left hand side “Associates SiteStripe Options.” Check it out in the image linked above.
As you can see in the below images, make sure that you have the toggle as “enabled,” and the sitestripe buttons as “get link” and “share” checked. I personally use the “get link” a ton.
In the picture above, you can see what sitestripe looks like in action. This is so simple to utilize when creating affiliate links on your website. Type in the product you’re looking for and click on it so it’s full page (like how you would if you went to buy it).
Then click on the “text” and pick “shortened link.” Take that shortened link and add it into your image or button on your website (along with a disclaimer) for people to buy.
For example, if you head over to my shop page, all the links are either affiliate through amazon or beachbody (where I receive 25% commission on anything bought with my link). I obviously only recommend products I use and like, but it’s an easy way to create content and share products that can help people.
5. sell something within the first 90 days
this must be to a customer and not a family member or spouse. From what I can tell if you’ve ever mailed something to someone, their address, etc and amazon has a record of it, those purchases do not count toward your affiliate account revenue.
The purpose of the amazon affiliate account is for traffic generating websites, however, if someone who is not attached to your amazon account (aunt/uncle, friend, etc) does purchase from your site due to your awesome organization and say they’re on your email list and read a blog post of yours that included an amazon affiliate link, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those purchases did count toward your amazon affiliates revenue. I would always defer back to the terms and conditions.
“money does grow on trees, you just need to be taught how to plant them. ”
In the end, there is probably 700 more things you can learn about utilizing an Amazon Affiliates account, best practices, and dos/don’ts of affiliate marketing by gurus much greater than I. But for those who are curious on whether it’s easy or not and exactly what it looks like, these are the steps I’ve taken (so far) to create US based affiliate income.
While my website is still growing (2020 is the first year I’ve really utilized affiliate links and written blog posts, I was scared of putting myself out there for at least 2-4 years, if I’m being honest!), I have earned $100 dollars this year in amazon affiliate income alone.
You can check this out by going to “reports” and then “earning reports.”
Most of my earnings as you can see below was when we launched our Pediatric Exercise Handbook: A Developmental How To For Parents and Clinicians and promoted it heavily in March.
Since then, I’ve focused on moving from Washington to Wisconsin #militarylife, finding a Physical Therapy job, and getting settled in our new house in Milwaukee along with creating more blog posts and learning SEO (how well your stuff is found on google/other search engines).
That being said, it was basically $100 free dollars, a little baby money tree, and I will graciously receive that from the universe with no complaints. The biggest win for me, is that it allows for organization and for it to build as you build. You might not get a ton of revenue as your blog starts out, but as your traffic increases (in theory) so will your revenue.
Amazon is also a great place to brainstorm content. What is selling right now? How can you make it more convenient for people to shop? Can you create a gift guide and tag your affiliate links on your website so people can purchase them easily?
People like quick wins and convenience. Be a place where people will come back to your site because it’s easier to find what they’re looking for than typing it into google. Create value in a million different ways and continue learning to create more revenue for your business so you can change the world in the way that you feel is best. Because we cannot be starving artists or healthcare martyrs and effectively and whole heartedly change the world.
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AUTHOR: Dr. Lauren Baker, DPT, PT, ATC, MTC is a Physical Therapist, Certified Athletic Trainer, Online Fit Coach, Military Wife, & Circus Addict who is obsessed with sharing all her adventures & knowledge so that you know that literally ANYTHING is possible with a little bit of Google & a WHOLE lot of courage. ps let's hang on instagram.
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