How to become an amazon affiliate.

Trying to figure out how to become an Amazon affiliate to start earning money with the Amazon Associates program?

Amazon Associates is a little more complicated than your average affiliate program, but it’s still pretty easy for anyone to become an affiliate on Amazon.

In this post, we’re going to cover everything that you need to know to go from absolutely zero to successfully joining Amazon Associates and earning your first Amazon affiliate commission.

Key Takeaways

  • Amazon accepts affiliates from around the world, but there are still some basic eligibility requirements to go over.
  • Once you’ve joined the program, it’s time to earn by selecting products you want to earn commission on and how to promote them.
  • There are some key rules you need to abide by as Amazon is stricter than most other affiliate programs.

📚 Table of contents:

Who can join the Amazon Affiliate program? 🤔

How to become an Amazon affiliate

Amazon Associates accepts affiliates from any country, so you can join the program no matter where you’re located.

However, you need a valid platform for promoting Amazon’s products to join.

There are three options for joining:

Let’s go through them!

1. Website

The most common way to join Amazon Associates is to promote products on your own website. If this is your plan, Amazon Associates says that your website must meet the following criteria:

  • “Robust original content” – Amazon says that a good rule of thumb is having at least ten unique posts on your site, though this is open to interpretation.
  • Recent content – you must have posted new content within the past ~60 days or so.
  • Acceptable content – your content cannot be illegal, hateful, false, defamatory, sexually explicit, or have any other similar issues.

If you don’t have a website yet, the easiest way to get started is to create a site using WordPress. We have detailed guides on how you can start your own site:

Once you add enough content, you’re ready to join Amazon Associates.

2. Social media

In addition to having a website, Amazon Associates will also accept promotion via the following social networks:

  • Facebook – personal Facebook pages are not allowed on the application, but you can apply using a public group page or a fan/business page. You cannot apply with a closed or private group page or a page with hidden followers, though.
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • TikTok
  • Twitch.tv

If you’re applying as an Amazon associate with a social media profile, your page must be established and have a decent number of organic followers.

Amazon recommends having at least 500 organic followers, though again, this is open to interpretation.

Additionally, make sure to enter the exact URL to your profile/page on the social network when you apply – don’t just put “facebook.com” or “Instagram.” I’ll remind you about this in the step-by-step guide below.

3. App

Finally, you can also apply with a mobile app, as long as it meets the mobile application policy. For example, the app must be free to download and available via the official app stores (Google Play, Apple, or Amazon).

How to become an Amazon affiliate – step-by-step 📝

If you meet the above criteria, you’re ready to join the Amazon Associates program. In this section, we’ll take you step-by-step through the actual process of creating your account and applying.

  1. Go to Amazon Associates and click “Sign up”
  2. Enter basic account information
  3. Enter your website details (or social media/app)
  4. Finish profile details
  5. Wait for approval
  6. Repeat for additional Amazon locations

1. Go to Amazon Associates and click “Sign up”

To begin, click here to go to the Amazon Associates website and then click the Sign up button:

Click the signup button

If you already have an Amazon account you use for shopping, you can use that to join the Amazon Associates program.

If you don’t have an Amazon account yet, you’ll need to create one:

Log in to your account

2. Enter basic account information

Next, you’ll be prompted to enter some basic account information, such as the contact details of the person to whom the Amazon affiliate program will issue payments.

If you already have an Amazon account, Amazon should import these details automatically, but you can edit them if needed:

First step to register for an Amazon Affiliate Program account

3. Enter your website details (or social media/app)

Next, you’ll need to add the addresses of the website(s), social media profile(s), and/or mobile app(s) where you plan to promote Amazon affiliate products.

Remember, if you’re planning to promote products on your social media profile or YouTube channel, you need to enter the exact link to your specific page/channel. You cannot just put “facebook.com” or “youtube.com.”

You need to apply with at least one website/app, but Amazon will let you add up to 50 different addresses if needed, which is useful if you’re planning on promoting products in multiple spots.

For example, if you’re planning to promote products on both your website and your YouTube channel, you should add the direct links to both:

Add the websites where you'll promote Amazon products

4. Finish profile details

Now, you’ll need to enter some additional profile details.

First, you get to choose your preferred Associates ID. Your Associates ID is the tracking code that will be added to your regular Amazon affiliate links.

Typically, you’ll want to make it something associated with your website. For example, if I were creating an Amazon affiliate account to promote products on Themeisle, I would choose themeisle as the Amazon Associates store ID.

If you’re joining the USA Amazon Associates program, Amazon will append -20 to the end of your store ID in tracking links. For example – themeisle-20.

Don’t worry too much about choosing the perfect Amazon Associates store ID because Amazon will let you create additional IDs once your account is approved. For example, you can create a unique ID for every website or platform that you promote Amazon products on so that you can keep your links separate.

Once you’ve chosen your associates ID, you’ll need to enter some additional information about what your websites are about and what types of products you plan to promote.

Don’t worry – you aren’t locked in to only promote these products – it just gives Amazon an idea of how you’ll be promoting them:

Third step to register for an Amazon Affiliate Program account

Once you’ve completed these sections, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Finish.

5. Wait for approval

Now, you’re all set! From this point on, there’s no special demand on how to get accepted to Amazon Associates. All that’s left to do is wait for approval from Amazon. If your site meets the requirements and you filled out all the information accurately, you should receive the Amazon affiliate program approval quickly.

Typically, it only takes around one day for the Amazon affiliate program approval, but it may take longer or shorter for your specific situation.

6. Repeat for additional Amazon locations

Amazon Associates is a bit weird in that you need to apply separately to every Amazon region store where you want to promote products. For example, if you want to promote products on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, you’ll need to apply separately to the Amazon Associates program on both sites.

To quickly find the Amazon Associates program for other regions, you can use the region selector in the top-right corner of the main Amazon Associates page:

How to become an Amazon affiliate in different regions

How to make money from Amazon Associates 💸

Once you’ve become an Amazon affiliate, let’s talk about how you can start making money from the Amazon Associates program aka earning Amazon affiliate commissions.

a) Add your payment methods

Once you get the Amazon affiliate program approval, the first thing you’ll want to do is add your payment methods:

  1. Click on your email address in the top-right corner.
  2. Select Account Settings from the drop-down.
  3. Choose Change Payment Method.
Add payment information

You also might need to provide tax information at this time.

If you’re wondering how does Amazon pay their affiliates, the Amazon Associates program offers the following payment methods:

  • Direct deposit (bank)
  • Amazon.com gift card
  • Check

Amazon supports direct bank deposit in the USA and 50+ different countries in Europe:

Amazon direct deposit locations

If your region isn’t supported, a common strategy is to use a Payoneer account to receive USD bank deposits, which you can do from no matter where you’re located (including Asia).

Geniuslink has a detailed article explaining how to set this up if you’re interested in using this method.

b) Find Amazon products that you want to promote

Once you’ve got the housekeeping out of the way, your next step is to start finding some Amazon products that you want to promote.

Personally, I think the easiest way to do this is just by browsing Amazon like you usually do, rather than trying to use the Amazon Associates dashboard.

Once you’ve found the products that you want to promote, you need to generate your affiliate link for these products. This ensures that you get credited for all the traffic that you send to Amazon from your website.

The easiest option is to use the search box on the regular Amazon website to search for the product’s name. Make sure to be logged in with the same account that you use for the Amazon affiliate program. You can then click on Text under Get link to generate the affiliate link:

How to create Amazon affiliate links

If you do not know where to find Amazon affiliate ID, you can either click on the drop-down arrow next to Tracking ID when you generate affiliate links (as seen in the picture above) or access your Amazon associate account and select Manage Your Tracking IDs.

where to find Amazon affiliate ID

Or, if you’re using WordPress, a simpler and more effective solution is to use a dedicated WordPress Amazon affiliate plugin.

For more details on how to create links within the Amazon affiliate program, you can read our complete guide to creating Amazon affiliate links.

d) Create content on your website/profile that promotes that product

In order to drive traffic to the affiliate products that you’ve found, you’ll need to create some type of content based on those products.

One common strategy is “best of” listicles. For example, if you want to promote some tents on Amazon, you could create an article titled “8 Best Tents for Camping: Camping is Intense in These Tents.”

Or, you could write a dedicated review, or even just include a passing mention in a relevant article. For example, if you write recipes and you tell people to check the internal temperature of the meat, you could share an affiliate link that takes people to your favorite meat thermometer on Amazon.

In general, you’ll need to experiment here to find the right type of content that will:

  1. Attract traffic via search engines and/or social media.
  2. Convince people to click on your affiliate link and make a purchase (so you can get an Amazon affiliate commission).

Key Amazon affiliate rules to maintain your status ⚠️

Learning how to become an Amazon affiliate and adding links to your site is only part of the puzzle when it comes to growing your relationship with Amazon.

If you want to maintain your status as an Amazon affiliate, it’s absolutely essential that you follow Amazon’s rules. Some common affiliate marketing tactics can actually get you banned from Amazon Associates, so you don’t want to be in for a bad surprise.

Here’s what to pay attention to after becoming an Amazon affiliate:

1. Make three sales within six months to avoid deactivation

If you want to maintain your Amazon Associates account, Amazon requires that you make at least three sales within the first six months. Otherwise, they’ll deactivate your account.

For this reason, you might want to wait to apply to Amazon Associates until your site already has steady traffic.

If your Amazon affiliate account does get deactivated because you haven’t driven those three sales, don’t worry! Amazon will let you reapply for Amazon Associates in the future – just wait until your site has some more traffic before you do.

Additionally, don’t try to meet this condition by placing orders using your own affiliate link, as that is against Amazon’s policies and will cause Amazon to deactivate your affiliate account (more on this below).

2. Add a prominent Amazon affiliate disclosure

If you’re participating in the Amazon Associates program, Amazon mandates that you prominently disclose that information on your website. This is also the law in many jurisdictions, such as FTC requirements for people in the USA.

An example of a disclosure statement would be something like:

[INSERT_SITE_NAME] is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to [INSERT_APPLICABLE_SITE_NAME].

I recommend creating a dedicated page that holds your disclaimer. Then, when you’re actually adding affiliate links, you can add a smaller disclaimer such as the following and link to your full affiliate disclosure:

I may earn a small commission if you purchase via my link. Learn more at THIS_PAGE.

Amazon does not allow you to cloak your Amazon affiliate links.

If you’re not familiar, link cloaking lets you make your URLs “pretty.” For example, instead of showing shrsl.com/sjkhjkhjhkwrere you can display yoursite.com/go/product-name.

There are no “ifs, ands, or buts” here. Simply put, you should absolutely never cloak an Amazon affiliate link or use any type of redirect that hides Amazon’s link and your affiliate code.

If you’re using an affiliate plugin to insert affiliate links automatically in your content, make sure that you’ve disabled cloaking for Amazon links in the plugin’s settings.

Because the Amazon Associates program is so popular, most affiliate link plugins include special features to handle Amazon affiliate links where you can cloak all of your other links but leave Amazon affiliate links uncloaked.

4. Only include prices if you use the Amazon Associates API

This is a really weird rule that’s unique to Amazon.

When you write about a product that you’re promoting, you are not allowed to just write the current price of the product in the editor. Amazon doesn’t like you doing this because the prices are often changing and Amazon doesn’t want people to promote inaccurate information.

If you want to get around this, one workaround is to use price references – e.g. “$” for low-price products, “$$” for medium-price products, and “$$$” for expensive products.

If you want to display exact prices, you must use the Amazon Associates API, which will automatically update the price if it changes on Amazon. The easiest way to do this on WordPress is to use one of the popular Amazon affiliate plugins, such as AAWP.

Additionally, if you’re displaying prices in a comparison format, Amazon requires that you display both the lowest new price and the lowest used price.

Recap:

  • Never write Amazon product prices directly in the content editor.
  • If you want to embed specific prices, only do so via the Amazon API (which you can access via Amazon affiliate plugins)

5. Do not self-host product images that you download from Amazon

In addition to being strict about prices, Amazon Associates is also very strict about using product images from Amazon to promote products.

You cannot download a product image from Amazon and then re-upload it to your site (AKA hosting that image on your own server). However, you can include these images if you serve them directly from Amazon or via the API.

For example, if you generate an “Image + Link” affiliate link via Amazon’s website, you can have that image on your site as long as it’s loading from Amazon’s servers.

Or, you can use an Amazon affiliate plugin to insert product images from Amazon properly.

You can use other non-Amazon images to promote products, such as your own images or images directly from the manufacturer. However, if you do this, you cannot add an affiliate link directly to the image. That is, you can’t make it so that people click on a third-party image and it takes them to your affiliate link.

You could, however, add a button next to the custom image that contains your affiliate link.

Recap:

  • Don’t download product images from Amazon and host them on your own website.
  • If you want to embed official Amazon product images, embed them via the API or using the embed code from the Amazon Associates website.
  • You can use third-party images to promote affiliate products, just don’t hyperlink the images themselves using your affiliate link.

If you’re only including Amazon affiliate links on your website, you don’t need to worry about anything here. However, if you’re planning to promote elsewhere, it’s important to understand that you should never share your links in the following locations:

  • Emails
  • PDFs
  • eBooks
  • Private groups (such as a Facebook group* with restricted membership)
  • Direct ads on Facebook

You can post your links on your own personal or business Facebook pages as well as publicly viewable Facebook groups – just don’t share them in private groups. You’re also allowed to include affiliate links on YouTube.

Also, it should go without saying, but don’t spam your Amazon affiliate link on other people’s websites.

This is a pretty common rule for all affiliate programs, but it’s worth reiterating that you are not allowed to make Amazon purchases via your own affiliate links.

Any purchases that you make will be disallowed and may put your Amazon Associates account in jeopardy.

Become an Amazon affiliate today 💻

Learning how to become an Amazon affiliate unlocks a ton of income-earning potential for your website.

You’ll not only get credit for sending sales to the products that you mention on your site, but you can also get credit for any other products that people purchase after using your link.

Even though the Amazon affiliate commissions have been reduced, that can still add up to a lot of money and there’s a reason that the Amazon Associates program is so popular.

To get started, all you need to do is follow the steps in this article.

Then, to maintain your status, make sure to follow the rules and best practices that we outlined above. Amazon is very strict about rules when it comes to product details such as prices and images, so it’s important to comply with the policies of the Amazon affiliate program.

To help you more easily integrate Amazon affiliate products into your site, we recommend using a dedicated Amazon affiliate plugin. These plugins can help you add Amazon affiliate links to your site and insert accurate product information and pictures via the API.

If you want to go further, you could even create your own Amazon affiliate store on your WordPress site and integrate WordPress with Amazon in other ways.

Do you still have any questions about how to become an Amazon affiliate? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help!

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