Commissions through Amazon Associates

by Ron Kurtus (revised 7 February 2017)

Amazon Associates is an affiliate program from Amazon.com where you can earn commissions through sales directed from ads on your website.

When a visitor clicks on an Amazon.com ad on your website, an identification code is included in the link, such that the you will get credit for any purchases made from the link. Commissions vary from 4% to 8.5% of the purchase price, depending on the volume of sales.

You can easily sign up to be an Associate and post ads on your website as a way to gain revenue. They also have an easy process to get HTML code for links to various Amazon pages or products. There are also features available to improve your revenue flow.

Questions you may have include:

How do you sign up?
How do you get links to put on your web pages?
What other features are there available?

This lesson will answer those questions.

Signing up

You can sign up to become an Amazon Associate by accessing the Affiliate Program page, entering your email address, selecting a password, and providing other necessary information to start up an account.

You must select your payment method, whether by check or direct deposit in your bank account.

As an individual, you must provide your Social Security number for tax purposes. If your website is a business, you must provide your Federal U.S. tax ID (EIN).

Getting links

After logging into your Amazon Associates page, you can click the Links & Banners tab to get the code for adding product links and graphical banners to your web pages.

Product links

Click Add Product Links Now and then search for products and books of interest. A sample, active text link is:

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success

Banner links

Click Add Banners Now to see a list of banner links by category. Selecting a category brings you to a page listing links according to size. A sample, active banner is:

Link to any page in Amazon.com

An easy way to link to a product is to the Site Stripe feature, where you can create links directly from the Amazon.com site without having to visit Associates Central. It lets you build links to any page on Amazon and has handy short-cuts to some other useful Associates pages.

If you are logged in as an Associate, the Site Stripe displays at the top of each page you access in Amazon.com. This allows you to easily create links to various pages in the site.

Amazon Associates Site Stripe along the top of the page allows for easy link creation

Other features

Other features for Associates include detailed reports on income and items sold, discussion boards, associates blog and performance tips.

Summary

Amazon Associates is an affiliate program that allows you to earn commissions through sales directed from your website. Commissions vary from 4% to 8.5% of the purchase price, depending on the volume of sales. You can easily sign up to be an Associate and get various types of links to add to your site. The program also has features available to improve your revenue flow.

Help your site visitors get what they want