Amazon Affiliate Marketing

The Amazon associates is one of the easiest ways to get into affiliate marketing. Given the vast amount or products for sale at the site it’s an excellent way to find out what your visitors are actually interested in. There is no reason not to sign up.

What You Should Know About Amazon Affiliate Marketing

The Amazon Associates Program is an opportunity for affiliates to sell products through Amazon’s sales system and to receive a commission based on their sales. These products must be tangible goods, not Kindle self-publishing or other digital wares. (Those items are handled through a different system.)

To use the Amazon Associates Program, you must meet your country’s requirements for digital transactions. Some countries require having a brick-and-mortar bank account, others have special tax and tariff requirements.

For this reason, be sure to sign up with the Amazon that meets your business’s national affiliation. Furthermore, if you plan to do international business, you might need to meet the requirements of more than one country.

How to Become an Amazon Associate

Becoming an Amazon Associate is as easy as filling out a simple form. It looks a bit daunting at first, but it really isn’t any more complicated than signing up for Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime.

Go to the Amazon Associate Link at the bottom of the Amazon page, or use the link provided here. From there, click on the “Learn More” link to explore the various options so you can have a good idea of how the whole thing works. When you are ready, click on the “Join Now” link, and fill in the form.

Be prepared to sell tangible merchandise and have appropriate banking information ready. Remember, different countries can have different banking requirements. In order to receive your pay, you will need to be compliant with your country’s regulations.

Setting up Advertising

With your Associates page set up, the next step is to link to your website, Facebook or Twitter account to maximize your advertising. Amazon provides the Site Strip Toolbar which has easy linking tools to help maximize your advertising, making it possible to maximize your earnings.

Select the item you wish to add to your page, and then use the Toolbar to make a post on your Facebook or Twitter page. Incidentally, you can see your earnings report on the Toolbar, as well as you can use it to create connections.

Start Earning

With your merchandise in place, your advertising set up, and your financial arrangements made, you are ready to start earning. You will not only receive payments for your goods, you can also receive residual income from the Associates programs.

Earning Through Advertising

In addition to or even instead of earning by marketing your own merchandise, you can earn through your website by displaying advertising related to your processes or themes. For example, if you are an organic gardener who sells seed or live plants, you might put related advertising such as gardening tools or books on your website.

Amazon provides a list of banners, ads, and other tools that you can share on your website.

When a sale results from advertising on your page, you not only receive a commission on it, you receive a percentage of the sale price of all qualified merchandise in the customers shopping basket at the time of checkout.

Making an Amazon Sale

An Amazon Affiliate program sale is presumed to be made when certain conditions are met. First, the customer must use the link from your Amazon sales page. Second, the purchase must be completed. Third, you must have appropriate financial arrangements. If everything is fine, then you, the Amazon Associate, will receive a commission for the sale. From time to time, you can receive an additional percentage of special program fees.

These include such things as a small bonus when the customer signs up for trial memberships in Amazon, Prime, Dash buttons, or similar services. Amazon does reserve the right to limit or discontinue such services. Also included is the possibility of receiving a commission from sales made to other associates through the Amazon advertising program.

As part of your Amazon Associates membership, you can also make use of sponsored advertising programs for your own business, including posts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as detailed reports on your earnings, how well your advertising is performing, and more.

Amazon International

There are eleven different Amazon storefronts around the world. Except for Brazil, each country has its own storefront.

To receive commissions through Amazon affiliate India, China, and Japan, you must have a registered bank account within the country in question. This makes it more difficult for non-citizens of those areas to trade there. Therefore, you need to plan your advertising and trade connections accordingly. Of course, if you are a citizen of one of those countries, you will want to meet their conditions.

Each storefront is run separately. If you are doing business from the UK, and you want to place ads or host ads for Germany, France, Italy or Spain, you need to register with those respective countries as well. The same thing would go for the United States or Canada. Brazil is a little bit different.

Amazon.com has been selling a line of books in Brazil. In October of 2017, they announced they would expand to electronics and similar items from third parties. Amazon has moved slowly in Brazil, an area where it is notoriously difficult to break into business because of the complicated infrastructure and tax laws.

Should you wish to market products in Brazil, or if you are a Brazilian resident who would like to market products through Amazon, this slow and steady approach in that region is something of which you should be aware. It is possible to ship merchandise to Brazil from either the US or from the UK, but you might need to use a freight shipping service such as Borderlinx.

Taking it International

You can do business internationally without moving to another country. One way to do this is to maintain a bank account with a banking institution that has offices/branches in other countries, such as HSBC. For example, if you are a citizen of the United States, you can transfer money to banking accounts in China or India if you have an HSBC account in the US. Citibank Citigroup Center has a location in Tokyo. You can work with them in a similar fashion if you wish to do business with people in Japan.

The key is that you must have a bank account that is acceptable to the country in question, and your business must operate within the guidelines of the country in question. If your customer lives in another country, Amazon might award points for a purchase, but you would not be able to collect that money without proper financial arrangements.

Furthermore, and this cannot be over-emphasized, being accepted as an Amazon Associate in one country will not guarantee your acceptance in another. As previously mentioned, you need to sign up for each different storefront and work through the requirements for each of them to do across-the-board international trading through Amazon.com.

Avoiding International Complications

You can avoid the complications of international banking and shipping by focusing on trade in your own country or with countries that can easily trade with you. In some cases, this will not gravely limit your business, but in other cases, it might. It depends upon your country of origin, and your country’s regulations as much as it does upon the regulations of the other locations.

Putting it All Together

Let’s take using the Amazon affiliate program might work. Imagine that you are selling a line of herb seeds and plants. On your website, you have placed advertising for garden implements, terrariums, herbal teas and essential oils.

One of your customers places an order with you for three packets of seeds, but while browsing your website, explores some of the Amazon ads, as well. Your customer orders some tea from an Amazon Associate and is captivated by a fancy vacuum cleaner.

You receive your purchase price for the seeds, but you also receive an Amazon affiliate commission for the tea and the vacuum cleaner, as well as any other purchases the customer has in his or her cart.

Other Benefits of Being an Amazon Associate

In addition to residual income from advertising, you are able to take advantage of Amazon features such as tracking packages and programs that report the efficacy of the ads you place, as well as the ads you feature on your website. You become part of a large marketing venture that reaches far more people than you are likely to be able to reach on your own.

This translates into opportunities for better business, increased exposure and additional rewards in the form of income from advertising, as well as the potential (when properly managed) for international sales.

Amazon reports will also help with keeping track of your sales. You can quickly get totals that you will need for your income tax return, as well as tracking which sorts of merchandise are doing well, and which are not selling well. From these reports you can make decisions about ordering, inventory and advertising, using the analytics built into the Amazon marketing tools.

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