With the rise of the internet, the need for writers has never been greater than it is now. Once upon a time, most writing gigs were for authors of books or journalistic pieces for newspapers and magazines. But that’s no longer the case. Sure, you still have the traditional roles of authors and journalists alike, but you also have a whole new wave of writers in the form of bloggers.
Blogging with niche sites is a way of getting a message out there on the World Wide Web in what’s referred to as a post. It’s a more informal way of discussing a topic and helps to build a relationship with your readers.
These days, there are many, many ways to make money from writing online. But one of the most popular right now that’s making a lot of people very wealthy is through affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is the process of marketing products on behalf of someone else and reaping the rewards when that product sells through your advertisement. For example, many review niche sites out there will first give you the lowdown on the product or range of products in question. They’ll often compare them against one another and give their recommendation at the end.
All through the review will be hyperlinks or affiliate links that go straight to those particular products, so that, as soon as the customer has decided they’d like to buy it, they can go straight to it. When the product sells through these affiliate links, the person doing the marketing (i.e., the website owner) gets paid.
Why Choose an Amazon Affiliate?
While there are thousands of affiliate programs out there, with the Amazon Affiliate program, you get peace of mind knowing that you have the backing of the world’s largest internet retailer.
You also get a good range of tools to help you promote the products on your affiliate site and the dashboard lets you keep control over everything. Once you have both the affiliate program and a good website in place, there’s no reason why you can’t earn $5000+ per month.
More Benefits of Building an Amazon Affiliate Website
One of the most significant benefits you can find when building an Amazon affiliate website is just how easy it is to get started. It is also an excellent way to begin to learn a bit more about the internet and how everything works. You can then find your path from the creation of your website to the profit you will reap. The Amazon cookie also allows you to gain some profit from products other than the ones you are promoting.
Additionally, Amazon is already an authority website with its valued reputation, so you really don’t have to do a lot of selling because the name speaks for itself. Finally, creating your own Amazon affiliate website is a good step toward earning money in the long-term.
How to Create the Best Amazon Affiliate Website
Now that you know a little more about what an Amazon Affiliate website is, we’ll take you through some tried and tested techniques as to how to go about creating one of the best affiliate websites out there:
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Choose a Niche:
This is often the most difficult part of creating the best Amazon Affiliate sites. That being said, Amazon has such as huge range of products on offer that it really doesn’t have to be hard. One thing to keep in mind when choosing a niche site is to choose something that you can relate to and that you have an interest in and a real passion for.
It’s really hard to sound upbeat about a product and tempt others to buy it when you have no clue as to what it is or how it will be of benefit to people. Some obvious categories cover a wide range of products and will always be popular such as home and garden and technology, but to have a site that lists all the products for sale on Amazon in those categories would take forever.
Instead, look for something a little more niche in the main category such as sheds in the home and garden category or gadgets in the technology category. Once you have your idea, your niche website can begin to flourish.
Most of the traffic you will find on the website from the search engines are going to be coming from product related searches as well as product reviews. Sometimes the potential buyer is also searching for a bit more information on the product, so they can become more knowledgeable before continuing with the purchase.
Therefore, you will want to try to stay clear of using keywords that would lead a buyer to more of an informational article because that type of search won’t always translate directly into a sale for you. You have to find better ways to incorporate keywords for your niche into your content strategy so that the search will result in a sale and you can receive the affiliate commissions. You want to ensure that you have chosen a profitable niche.
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Make it Personable:
It’s a well-known fact that people buy from people they feel they can trust. So, the more personable you can make your website the more likely it is that people will take your review and recommendations seriously. Keep it factual but keep it real and include real reviews that people can relate to.
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Ranking:
There’s a lot of competition in the world of blogging today, so to be successful and achieve decent rankings you need to keep on top of the game. Even with the best search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in the world, it can take months to achieve this, so just be patient.
To give yourself the best chance of achieving a high ranking make sure you produce high-quality content with carefully chosen keywords. Updating each review or article monthly with those keywords and affiliate products/product reviews in mind will also help attract more visitors to your site and help you rank faster to start making money.
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Conversion:
Once you’ve drawn people into your site with interesting blogs and product reviews, the next part of the challenge is enticing visitors to buy. There are various little tricks that website owners can use to help increase conversion rates.
First, make sure you use a striking text color to grab the viewer’s attention. Even button color is important. Red and blue are the most widely used colors when it comes to ‘Buy’ buttons as they have the most efficient in terms of conversion.
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Promotion:
You can’t simply set up an Amazon Affiliate website and expect the traffic to come flooding in automatically. Promotion is another key aspect of creating any successful affiliate website. Once your website’s up and running you should also create a separate social media profile for it on as many platforms as you can.
Whenever you add new content to the website, you should also post it on social media. These are major authority sites that can seriously help increase traffic to your site.
Another good promotion technique is to search for forums and platforms that are relevant to your niche. From here, you can offer solutions to problems that other users present, including links to your own site.
Verifying Your Website Niche
Finally, once you have chosen your niche and have reviewed all the other information you will need to create a successful Amazon affiliate website, you will want to make sure that the website you built is going to be sustainable. Meaning, the niche you have chosen shouldn’t be too competitive or too underrated, so you have little to no traffic.
Keyword research and a competition analysis are two good ways to verify that your website will grab the right attention and stand out amongst the others in that niche. Don’t worry too much about towering over the competition just yet though. You want to first make sure that you have your focus on creating the best affiliate website that you can and then everything else will begin to fall into place.
Setting up an Amazon Affiliate Website with WordPress
If you choose a self-hosted WordPress to build your site, you will pick a domain name first. Make sure that your domain name is authoritative, so your site’s potential is not limited because of the wrong name.
Once the domain has been chosen, you can then navigate to your dashboard, and this is where you can manage the domain name and edit the nameservers. Next, you will pick a web host, install WordPress on your new site, and then choose the theme you want to use for your affiliate website. The theme of your self-hosted WordPress site should also tie into the niche you have chosen.
Creating a decent Amazon Affiliate website isn’t particularly difficult; it just takes a lot of time and patience. You probably won’t do everything right the first time around, either. However, the best way to learn is through failure, so don’t beat yourself up too much over it. Simply adjust your plan and refocus your efforts. Also, try not to concern yourself too much with the competition at first.
A few Amazon Plugins you might find useful as a beginner:
- EasyAzon. EasyAzon helps you quickly create Amazon affiliate links from within your WordPress dashboard
- AAWP (Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin)
- Amazon Link Engine
- Disclosure for Amazon Associates PluginThe Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate plugin is the fastest and easiest way to get your Amazon Affiliate site fully compliant with both the:
- FTC and Amazon required Affiliate Disclosure
- Amazon Trademark disclaimer
There will always be competition in anything you do. But, rather than focus your energy on what they’re doing, use it to enhance your own website, and before you know it, you’ll be making thousands of dollars a month.
Oh one more thing before I go- It’s really important that your Amazon Associate site follows Amazon’s rules! For more information on this, check out this post about what Amazon Requires from you in order to stay compliant!