What if I told you that you can make money off Amazon without being a seller?
That’s right-no need to create a seller account, fulfill orders as they come in or even sign up to Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) system.
How?
You can earn passive income through Amazon’s Associates affiliate program.Table of Contents
How The Amazon Associates (Affiliate) Program Works
After signing up to the program, you’ll get an affiliate code. You then send traffic to pages that have your code. When people click on links that have your code, you earn a commission from Amazon.
Pretty nifty, no?
The best part?
Absolutely no selling involved! Say goodbye to all those pesky FBA fees, warehouse headaches, and refund requests.
Here’s the step by step blueprint you follow to start BANKING on Amazon.
1. Join Amazon’s Affiliate Program
Visit this link Click the Join Now For Free link at the upper right.
2. Study the TOS
Read the terms of service very carefully.
3. Fill out the Program Application Form
Fill out the affiliate sign up form and wait for the confirmation email from Amazon welcoming you to their program. NOTE: in certain cases, you might get rejected by Amazon. For example, you might be signing for an additional account or you were previously banned for violating their terms of service.
4. Find popular product categories
Once you get accepted to the program, login to Amazon and click on the Departments link to see the full list of the most popular product categories.
5. Focus your research on categories you like
Drill down to product categories you’re personally interested in.
6. Find best selling products in your target categories
Click on the products listed at the top as “Best Sellers”
7. Compile the demand profile of different products in different categories
Take note of their overall rank. The lower the rank, the better. Go back to the category page for the product and find the number of results for that category. You should find something like “1 of 48 of over 20,000 results.”
8. Create a short list of high demand products
Repeat Steps 6 to 7 above until you have isolated several best selling products that rank high over thousands of other results in their category. The category must be a top level category. For example, you can get rankings for several sub-categories and the top level category.
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#117 in Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
#1 in Women's Wallets
#1 in Women's Wallets, Card Cases & Money Organizers
#67 in Women's Shops
In this case, pay attention to the top category of “Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry”
9. Filter your list in terms of competition level
Select the top sellers in the most competitive category. For example: if you find a product that is ranked #200 in a category with 20,000 competitors, pick it over another product that ranks #200 in a category with 5,000 or 10,000 competitors.
10. Filter your product short list by demand level
Pick the top seller with the highest number of reviews. Now you have picked a product with very high demand.
11. Filter your product by price
Your commission is a percentage of the price of the products you promote. Pick an affordably priced product-between $50 and $200. Very expensive products sell less and are less likely to be ‘impulse buys.’ Very cheap products don’t produce enough affiliate commissions.
12. Select the product you want to target
Cut out all other products and pick one to target. Load it’s product page on Amazon. You’ll be targeting this product’s category.
13. Enter your target category product’s keywords into Ubersuggest
Go to this link. Find keywords on your target product’s sales page on Amazon. You’ll get a long list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume estimates, advertiser competition level, and how much advertisers are paying per click for those keywords.
14. Find keyword phrases that are directly related to your target category
Ubersuggest will produce a long list of phrases. Select phrases that are most logically related to your target category. Note: There are many free and paid keyword research tool on internet. Personally, I use the ahrefs tool most. But you can go with any free keyword research tool you want.
15. Cross reference key phrase relevance with search volume
Filter the list of most relevant keywords you found based on their search volume. Remove key phrases that have less than 300 searches per month.
16. Keep only low volume search phrases with high relevance
Review your list of low volume search phrases (300 to 1000 searches per month) and delete any items that are not tightly related to your target product category.
17. Load your remaining keywords into Google to filter for competition level
Load all your remaining phrases and keywords into Google’s main search box. Delete items that have too much competition. After every search, you’ll see “about XXX results” Load all keywords and pick 10 to 20 keywords with the least amount of competing pages.
18. Load your filtered keywords to Google to find content ideas
Load the remaining keywords into Google’s search box to identify the most common type of content or the most common content format for your keywords.
Generally, the following content formats are available:
19. Create a Content Production Plan
Create a plan with the following:
20. Reverse-engineer “best of breed” content in your category
Find top ranking sites in your target product category. Take note of how they do the following:
21. Set up your site plan to draw in viewers with credibility-building content
Layout your site’s architecture. The main entry pages must be content that establishes your authority and builds credibility. These are ‘stripped down’ buyers’ guides, mini-resource pages, ‘how it’s made,’ ‘how to select,’ and buying specific ‘list’ content.
22. Set up your site plan to filter readers with authority pages
Once visitors end up at your site’s entry pages, draw them deeper into more in-depth content that further cements your authority and credibility. These are in-depth resource pages, more detailed list content, and fully developed buyers’ guides
23. Pick out the Amazon products you’re going to review
Select the Amazon products you’re going to sell on your Amazon Affiliate Site. These products must not be too cheap nor too expensive. Cheap products burn through lots of traffic for little money. Expensive products don’t convert at high enough rates to justify your costs. Create a list of products.
24. Go to Amazon and load your products to get their affiliate code
Go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com . Login to your affiliate account. Select Product linking. Search for the products on the list you made with Step #23 above. Get all your affiliate product links.
25. Decide to write or outsource your content creation
Go through your content plan. Decide if you’ll write your own stuff or outsource it. Consider the following factors:
26. Write your materials using a system
Start with the ‘deepest’ materials first. Get used to researching so you can build momentum when writing out other parts of your site. End with the reviews. Your knowledge level about your target content should be at its highest point when writing your reviews. Time yourself. Don’t burn out.
27. If you decide to outsource, put together a content brief
List out your requirements in one .doc file. Include links to examples. Be clear about what you need (pictures / links / etc.)
28. Put together a large list of potential content developers for your project
Go to affiliate marketing forums’ buy and sell sections and get the contact info of content writer freelancers or content agencies. Go to Fiverr and find top rated providers. Go to Craigslist and find writer listings for as many different cities as you can find. As much as possible go with content agencies like TextBroker, iWriter or WritterAccess since these have backup writers just in case one writer can’t deliver on time. “One man band” solo freelancers can and often disappear in the middle of a job.
29. Prepare for project price negotiations by finding an ‘average’ rate
Go to Upwork and find the average price for content development projects very similar to yours. Compare to your most realistic budget. Come up with your HIGHEST offer.
30. Contact your list of content developers
Get in touch with content developers on your list. Send them your content brief along with your maximum offer. Set your terms. These will cover revisions and refunds (if possible).
31. Select a provider and make sure they agree to your terms
You might have to split up your project among different providers.
32. Receive your content and input upon approval
Input your writers’ output to your site. Include necessary photos (with appropriate tags) and other elements (videos from youtube / inforgraphics)
33. Drive traffic to your Amazon Affiliate Site
Drive traffic through paid FB ads to your articles or ‘entry pages.’ You can also share your content on Facebook pages and FB groups. Set up a Hootsuite autotweet schedule for Twitter targeting your target category’s hash tags. Create backlinks for your website. You can also submit guest posts to blogs that cover your niche. This will help to rank your site on google for organic traffic.
Follow the steps above and finetune your traffic sources and content mix and presentation to maximize your sales. If you want to learn more about amazon affiliate marketing, check out my in-depth amazon affiliate marketing guide here.
Abu says
Very interesting.
Can you set it up for a fee?