Amazon Affiliate Program: Become an Amazon Affiliate & Grow Income with Geo-Targeting

Pritam Nagrale

Updated on:

Amazon Affiliate Program
Amazon Affiliate Program

In this post you will learn all important things about Amazon associates program. Things like how to become an Amazon affiliate & get fast approval, how to target 13 Amazon affiliate program with single link and what are Amazon cookies.

Affiliate Marketing is a lucrative business. Along with being lucrative it is also a great source of passive income.

I started affiliate marketing in 2004 with Commission Junction (CJ). Commission Junction is a very popular affiliate network where you can promote thousands of companies. I used to promote 4-5 different companies from CJ including eBay.

Apart from CJ, I promoted many other affiliate networks & individual affiliate programs and made good money. Affiliate marketing wasn’t easy at that time nor it is now. But today potential of affiliate marketing is much greater as compared to those days. 

If affiliate marketing is new to you or you have heard a lot about affiliate marketing but never made money with it then I would suggest you to start with Amazon affiliate marketing.

Amazon Associates Program is world’s oldest and most popular affiliate program. The commission structure of Amazon affiliate is relatively less compared with other affiliate programs.

However the great thing about Amazon is it is the most popular brand in the world and has got mastery in converting your visitors to customers. There are over 12 million products listed on Amazon’s website. This indicates, you can find every kind of product on Amazon and you can promote it.

If you research products with higher value, higher commission and good number of searches on Google, then making $100 per day with Amazon is not difficult.

I use Semrush for keyword research. It helps me to find best products from Amazon. I usually target products with 500 monthly searches and low competition.

So let's see the steps to become an Amazon affiliate and get the fast approval. After the signup process, I will share some of the important points that helped me to double my earning with the same traffic and same efforts.

Join and Become an Amazon Affiliate & Get Fast Approval

The most important criteria for joining Amazon affiliate program is that you must have your own website. If you don’t have a website then you can also use your social account or mobile app to join Amazon affiliate program.

If you want to use a website then it must be your own website or blog and it should have at least 10 articles published in last 60 days. If you don't have a website, then I will suggest you to start a WordPress blog here in next 30 minutes.

If you want to promote through social platforms then you can use only Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Twitch account and you must have 500 followers at least.

Step 1: Account Information

Visit affiliate-program.amazon.com for joining Amazon US affiliate program and click on ‘Sign up'. Amazon associates program is available in 13 countries. You can promote in all 13 countries from a single link.

In this post, I will share my experience on how I grew my affiliate commission to 150% by joining Amazon affiliate programs in multiple countries and geo-targeting my affiliate link. You can check affiliate programs of other countries here.

Amazon affiliate program

Click on Signup and login with your existing Amazon account.

If you don't have Amazon account or if you want to create Amazon affiliate account with a different email address, then click on ‘Create your Amazon account'. On the next screen, it may ask you to verify your email address by sending an OTP to your email address.

On the next page, you need to submit your details. You need to enter your payee name as per your name in the bank. You can see the image for more information.

Step 2: Add Website, Social Account or App

Click on Next. You need to add your website name or social account URL (FB, YT, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch) or your mobile app URL.

Add the details as per the image above and click on ‘Next'. On the next page, you need to enter more details about your website and way of promotion. Refer the image below to understand this. I have filled all the details. It's self explanatory from this image.

Step 3: Profile Setup

Step 4: Start using Amazon Associates Central

Once you enter all the details, click on Finish. You will get the congratulation message upon successful joining.

Amazon will review your application and if you get the approval, you will get the message. Meanwhile, you can start working on Amazon affiliate program immediately. You have full access to the Amazon associates dashboard.

Step 5: Setup Payment Information

Next, you need to submit your payment details. Click on ‘NOW' as per the image above.

If you are from USA, you can receive your payment by direct bank deposit, Amazon gift card or by check. If you are from India or if your country is not listed under direct deposit, you can opt for check or gift card.

NOTE: If you have a Payoneer account then you can use your Payoneer account to receive direct bank deposit. Payoneer provides a bank account for USA and other countries. You can use that account to receive direct bank deposit.

If you are not from USA then you need to submit tax form e.g. if you are from India, you need to submit W8-BEN tax form. You can click on the ‘Submit & Continue with Tax Information‘ button as shown in the image above.

How I Multiplied My Amazon Earning with Geo Targeting

I was running a niche website for Amazon affiliate where most of the traffic on my website was coming from USA. Around 30% traffic was from India, UK, Canada and other countries. I was making around $1000 monthly with that website.

I was so lazy that other than joining Amazon US and Amazon India I did not join Amazon Affiliate of any other country. Not only this, despite having an Amazon India account I didn’t make use of geo-targeting for the website.

I did an experiment – I used geo-targeting on that review website. Now Indian users were redirecting to Amazon.in instead of Amazon.com. After doing this almost 10% of the income which means up to $100 monthly started coming from Amazon India’s account.

After this, I got some motivation and also joined Amazon Affiliate of UK, Canada and other countries. After making use of Geo-targeting, my affiliate income increased by almost 25%.

It means the website from which monthly $1000 was coming, after geotargeting income went up by $1200 – $1250. If you calculate for the year, then it is $2500 – $3000 extra income without any extra effort

I had another 6 pages micro-niche website and almost 80% traffic was from India. I was making $250 per month from this. 15% – 20% of the traffic was coming from US and other countries. After a simple geo-targeting, my earnings crossed $400 per month.

It means I saw a growth of more than 60%.

So what is this geo-targeting and how do you do it?

Amazon geo Targeting

Suppose, you have created an Amazon website and your target is either US or India. Your main source of traffic is going to be Google.  

Almost all of the Amazon’s products are available worldwide.

If your posts rank in Google US then there are chances that your posts also rank in Google of other countries e.g. India, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany etc. So you may receive around 15% to 30% traffic from other countries.

If you have included Amazon.com affiliate link in your post and a visitor from UK, Canada or other country clicks on this link, then he/she will see Amazon.com website. And it is quite obvious that the visitor is not going to buy from Amazon.com website.

This way you are leaving a lot of commission on the table.   

Amazon’s affiliate program is available in 13 countries. So if I say, you need to use geotargeting in your posts, it means-

  1. You have to join the Amazon affiliate program of all these 13 countries (or most of the countries)
  2. You have to set your website in a way that if a visitor from any part of this world clicks the link in your post then he/she must land on his/her country’s Amazon site through your affiliate ID.

If the person purchases something from there then you will get a commission in the affiliate account of that country.

So how can you use geo-targeting on your website?

iAmazon has its own tool OneLink for geo-targeting. But I don't have good experience with Amazon's Onelink. If you are using a WordPress blog, there are many WordPress plugins that can help you in geo-targeting. My favorite is GeniusLink.

Amazon Cookies (24 Hours or 90 Days)

Most of the affiliate marketers are confused with Amazon cookies. They don't know if Amazon has 24 hours cookies or 90 days cookies. But today all of your confusion will get clarified.

Cookies are basically a value which is stored on the user’s browser by the affiliate marketing company. The cookie contains important information like affiliate ID and cookie duration.

Amazon Cookies

For example assume you are promoting a company. If a customer lands on the merchant’s site through clicking from your website and he sees the product and also liked it but he didn’t purchases at that time.

But rather after 2 days the customer lands directly on the same merchant’s site and buys the product. Then in that scenario you can get commission but it will depend upon period of the cookie. 

Suppose if you are promoting any given affiliate marketing company and the cookie period of that website is 30 days. If a visitor goes to that company’s site from your website. And that time he didn’t buy anything but after 29 days he goes to the company’s website and buys directly from there then also you will get the commission.

 It is because the visitor had company’s cookie installed in his/her web browser which detected that the customer clicked on that affiliate link within 30 days.

But under 3 scenarios you can lose your commission.

  1. After visiting your website, if the customer clicks on the Amazon's affiliate link from another website.
  2. The customer deleted the cookies from browser's search history.
  3. He used same PC and internet connection but used some other browser to purchase anything on Amazon.

So let us understand Amazon cookies.

Amazon’s cookie period is only 24 hours. This means, after clicking affiliate link from your post, if the customer doesn’t purchase the product within 24 hours then you won't get any commission.

But if customer adds the product into the cart then your cookie duration becomes 90 days instead of 24 hours.

Cookie that is of 24 hours is a disadvantage but you will feel good after knowing that Amazon is great in converting your visitors into customers in less than 24 hours. That’s why millions of affiliates earn excellent income from Amazon.

And if your landing page is very convincing then your conversion rate could go even higher.

So before joining an affiliate account you also better understand these points about cookies.

  1. After clicking any of the product’s link from your post, if the visitor lands on the Amazon and other than buying that product he also buys some other products then you will get commission on all the products. I almost get 40% – 50% in commission from products which I never promoted. While doing your niche research, if you calculate earning potential of a product is $1000 per month, you may expect $1500 or more. With geo-targeting, you can earn even more.
  2. If in the customer’s cart 2 products have already been added, then from your website he clicks on Amazon’s link and adds 3 more products and in total buys 5 products, then you get affiliate commission for 3 products only.   
  3. If someone from your website clicks on the Amazon’s link and adds 2 products in his cart. Now your cookie duration has become 90 days. Now after 1 week he adds one more product from Amazon and orders it then you will get commission for only last 2 products.
  4. If a customer from your website lands on Amazon and purchases something immediately. But after 2 hours he comes back and purchases something again, then despite being cookie duration of 24 hours, you get commission for first order only.

So I am sure, you will have a clear understanding of Amazon cookies.

Conclusion:

Amazon affiliate program is an excellent way of making money online. If you are passionate about affiliate marketing then I will recommend you to start with Amazon affiliate only because it's much easier as compared to other affiliate programs. I have been making money with Amazon affiliate for last 10 years and I find it awesome. Become an Amazon affiliate as per the steps explained above and join affiliate program of all 13 countries.

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