How to Increase Your Amazon Affiliate Earnings

Many website publishers and bloggers want to spread a message. Sometimes it’s that personal gospel that garners them a following and makes them an authority within their industry. Before long, they might start to think ‘how can I get paid for educating people on products they love?’

Brands often need help to sell products, and affiliates want to make money off generating leads or sales to a brand. This is how the Amazon Affiliate Program became such a success. Amazon is already a trusted brand to consumers, and their affiliate program gives website owners and bloggers an incentive for selling a specific product from Amazon.

It may sound pretty easy to get started, but there’s actually quite a bit that goes into making the most of your Amazon Affiliate account. Here are eight tips to help increase your earnings and become the extension brands and consumers have come to trust.

1. Produce Quality Content

This should go without saying, but it’s worth repeating:

Your non-affiliate content should be just as strong as your affiliate content.

Strong content builds trust with potential customers, and it ranks better with the search engines, too. Nothing screams “affiliate content ahead” quite like poorly-worded content alongside rich, well-written affiliate ads. Keep your content quality the same, even if you’re not making money on it. Otherwise, you risk losing your readers and permanently turning them off.

2. Know the Customer’s Place in the Buying Cycle

Sometimes the best way to produce quality content is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Say you run an outdoor adventurist blog with an avid readership, and you host a variety of affiliate ads for hiking boots. Rather than show the same ad for hiking boots to every visitor, it’s best to tailor affiliate offers depending on the visitor’s stage in the sales funnel.

Initially, your reader may be aware they want to hike on the West Coast. At this point, they don’t even have an interest for hiking boots. Use your website’s content to coax the reader to the point of wanting to purchase your affiliate product. Try writing articles on the terrain of certain West Coast hiking locations, or the benefits of hiking on the West Coast.

After their interest is piqued, refine the content. Try to answer whatever questions your reader might have in their stage of the buyer cycle.

As you’re walking the customer through the sales funnel, you can sprinkle in your affiliate link throughout the article, too. This brings me to tip number three.

3. Link Your Affiliate Listings in Content

You’ve walked your readers into the world of the Pacific Crest Trail. Now it’s time to walk them into a new pair of hiking boots.

As you write potential content targeting this buyer, sprinkle in your affiliate content. Notice I said sprinkle— should in no way dominate the discussion. Something as simple as “to see my recommendations for the best hiking boots for a rocky terrain, click here” should be enough to do the trick. But if it isn’t…

4. Create a Bestseller List or Comparison Chart

People love comparisons. They help justify any purchases the reader makes, and often empowers them to make sound and solid decisions in the first place. It validates their decision making, especially when there’s strong social proof.

It’s proven that up to 70% of consumers look at a product review before making a purchase. Why? They want to know what others have to say about that product or service to see if it’s a good fit for them before they make their purchase.

Amazon has reviews on their products from people who actually made a purchase, and bestseller lists and comparison charts help readers weigh what’s important to them, and make the best decision possible. For affiliates, it allows you a seamless way to integrate your affiliate link into a trusted resource as well.

One site that mastered this practice is LiveLongerRunning.com, a blog dedicated to in-depth treadmill and training articles. This site makes it easy to learn about each treadmill available, and they keep a well-integrated list running alongside every article.

The website’s crème de la crème is the 2015 Comparison Chart. From here, a customer can compare any treadmill on the market. The comparison chart is always updated, to keep readers up-to-date on the product offerings. Readers can click right through to the Amazon Affiliate Page for any treadmill, or go back and read reviews. All items on this site point back to the Comparison Chart to aid in sending traffic via the affiliate.

5. Multiply Your Product Offerings

The treadmill example above works because it focuses on one item, and gives you everything you need to make an informed decision to purchase that item. This model works well, so why not branch out? You can do this one of four ways:

• Add Other Extensions on the Same Site. Treadmills are usually targeted at two types of people: those who work out regularly, and those that don’t. Perhaps integrating the best exercise bikes or elliptical machines directly on this site would help you gain more affiliate revenue. The caveat here is knowing when to stop adding extensions to avoid an incohesive clutter.
• Add Other Extensions on a Different Site. You have a winning affiliate model, so copy it. Offer ‘LiveLongerBiking.com,” “LiveLongerFreeWeights.com,” or “LiveLongerWithEllipticals.com.” Your new content appears on a different site, but the format is the same.
• Use Relevant Content to Offer New Extensions. Under a recent blog post, LiveLongerRunning.com features the best music to keep you going. In addition to offering affiliate links to treadmills, they can now sprinkle in music suggestions or links to an mp3 player.
• Create a “Things I Love” Page. If your readers see you as a trusted resource, they’ll want to know what other things you recommend. This may be a good place to subtly link to other Amazon listings.

6. Go a Little Longer With Your Keywords

It’s counter-intuitive to some PPC optimization strategies, but for affiliates, this has the power to really drive success. Keywords are important, and so are long-tail keywords. But those really long-tail keywords, the ones that have few eyeballs and even smaller volume, often mean little competition. For instance, the long-tail keyword “hiking boots for the Pacific Crest Trail” yielded very little competition compared to just “hiking boots.”

7. Build a Following

Repeat after me: building a community is a good thing. It may be time-consuming, and can be a bit of a drag (especially if you’re not a social person), but persistence pays off.

How do you get started? Build an email subscriber base, become social media savvy, and embrace the forums. You could increase your earnings, and you might pick up a few tips and tricks along the way, too.

8. Keep Your Reader in Mind

Sometimes it’s easy to get pulled into lucrative affiliate offers without thinking about your readers. If your outdoor adventurist blog is a hit with debt-ridden college crowd, the last thing you want to do is push an expensive hiking backpack over a more affordable, traditional backpack.

As much as we’d like to believe that our reader would go for the expensive bag (because we’d make more money on it), it’s largely untrue. Bring to your readers what they’re likely to purchase, not what you want them to purchase.

Affiliate marketing can be quite fun and competitive, and these tips provide the edge you need to earn more from your hard work. Make sure you’re a trustworthy affiliate. You want to be the center of attention, the one brands turn to. That’s the key to being a successful affiliate marketer.

How to Increase Your Amazon Affiliate Earnings