Amazon Affiliate Marketing: How to Start, Steps, and Best Practices

We’ve all heard of Amazon. It’s a safe bet that most people have bought something from the mighty online retailer. We’re now living in a time where almost anything you can imagine can be found and purchased on the website.

But Amazon is not just an online marketplace. It’s actually an incredible opportunity for individuals to make a lot of money. And the best part is that they don’t even have to create their own product or service to do so.

This is what’s known as Amazon affiliate marketing.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at what affiliate marketing is and how it works. We’ll explore the benefits of using the program, before taking a deep dive into how you can set up your own high-ticket affiliate marketing program to potentially start earning a very tidy revenue as well as offering useful and actionable Amazon affiliate marketing tips.

The Benefits of Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Many online marketplaces offer some form of affiliate program to try and generate more revenue, but Amazon’s is by far the most popular with around 48% of the market share. And the reasons extend beyond just money.

Some of the other major benefits of using Amazon for affiliate marketing include:

• Brand trust - everyone knows Amazon. It wouldn’t have been able to grow as large as it has without a formidable reputation and trust. The Amazon affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, is well-established. This makes it a very safe bet to get started with.
• Scope of goods - the number of different products that can be bought and sold on Amazon is enormous. So if you have a particularly niche hobby, or audience, the chances that you’ll be able to find something to appeal to your audience are still high.
• Supportive partnership - Amazon wants their affiliate partners to succeed. So they invest a lot of effort into making the platform as rewarding as possible. They have a 24-hour cookie in place, so if a customer you’ve sent fails to make an initial purchase but buys within that time period, you’ll still make the commission.
• Highly secure - Amazon has a large number of stringent security features in place to keep your payment and personal information safe. You can rest assured that you’ll be well looked after on their platform.

The Core Mechanics of Amazon Affiliate Marketing

The thinking behind Amazon affiliate marketing is that you use your own website or social media pages to advertise products that can be purchased on Amazon. Whenever a customer clicks on your affiliate link to complete the purchase on Amazon, you will receive a small commission from the sale.

Let’s take a closer look at what this involves.

How Does the Amazon Associates Program Work?

Once you’ve had everything set up and verified, and you’ve been successfully approved for your chosen affiliate products and links, you’ll use your various channels to advertise these products. This can be done via blogs, videos, social media posts, and emails. We’ll go into this in a little more detail later on.

Within the Amazon affiliate marketing programs, you’ll be encouraged to set up link tracking on all of your links. These are what Amazon uses to monitor the quality of each individual link, which you can then keep an eye on to see which links are working and which might need changing.

Then, as soon as a member of your audience clicks on an affiliate link to make a purchase on Amazon, you’ll receive commission. The best part is that it doesn’t even have to be the product you were advertising! As long as the customer makes a purchase on Amazon through your link, you’ll be rewarded.

As soon as you’ve made three qualified sales through your affiliate links, you’ll be fully integrated into the program. Do keep in mind that you only have 180 days to complete the qualifying sales, otherwise your account will be closed.

Affiliate Link Types You Can Use

There are a number of different types of affiliate links to choose from, so no matter your content strategy, you’ll be able to use the program. Some of the most popular types of links include:

• Product links - these links will go directly to a product within Amazon. You can place the link directly under the product image on your website or social pages. You can also insert a ‘Buy from Amazon’ button which will give the link a feeling of authenticity.
• Recommended product links - these are links that update automatically on your pages and correspond to categories and keywords of your choice. Whenever Amazon recommends a product with these keywords, it’ll appear on your pages.
• Text links - these are links that are contained within a body of text. They’re usually attached to keyword phrases within the text that will take the reader through to the relevant product page on Amazon.
• Banner links - these are essentially images that appear at the top or bottom of the page (or at the side) within your website. They’re designed to be visually appealing and straight to the point.

Commission Rates and Categories

Your overall commission rate will vary depending on the type of products you advertise and the broader sector you’re advertising in. Amazon has a range of between 1-10% for commission rates.

There is also a 4% commission rate on any niche category that hasn’t been listed. There are also certain products that you can’t receive commission on, including gift cards, alcohol, Kindle sales, vehicles, prescription medication, and restaurant deliveries.

Additionally, there are flat-rate fees if members of your audience sign up to certain Amazon features, such as Amazon Prime or Audible.

How to Get Started With Amazon Affiliate Marketing

If this sounds like something you think you’d like to try, but you’re not quite sure of the best way to go about it, then not to worry. It’s quite a straightforward process, and Amazon gives you all the tools and assistance you’ll need to succeed.

Choose the Right Niche

The Amazon Associates program has been around for some time now. As a result, there are certain sectors of the website that are already quite saturated with affiliate marketing, such as a number of electronics markets.

Because of this, if you’re starting in 2025, you need to be a bit more creative in picking your entry point.

If you are someone who specializes in a market that is already saturated, you should look to advertise evergreen products. These are products that will always have a high level of consistent demand, so you’ll still stand a good chance of generating revenue from them even if they’re very popular.

You could also conduct market research into trending products or markets, and sell within these. There’s more work that goes into this as trends are always changing. But if you can time it right, you could do very well with your affiliate marketing.

Some excellent Amazon affiliate marketing website examples include Swim University:

Then another great example Retro Dodo.

Set Up Your Site or Channel

You then need to decide where you’re going to advertise these products. Many affiliate marketers will already have established social media channels and audiences to tap into. You’ll often see big YouTube and TikTok creators have affiliate links in their video descriptions.

But if you’re starting from scratch, then think about what you enjoy the most. If you’re an excellent videographer, then use YouTube or TikTok as your channel. If you’re a talented writer, then consider a blog.

You could also set up your own website, where you’ll be free to do a mixture of everything.

Apply for the Amazon Associates Program

Once you have your channels in place, you need to sign up to the Amazon affiliate program. It’s a very straightforward process - you’ll need to have a verified Amazon account set up and ready to go. You’ll also need to let Amazon know what you’re planning to advertise and where you’re planning to do it.

To reduce the risks of being rejected from the program, you’ll ideally have a steady stream of high-quality content already in place. Additionally, Amazon will not want their name attached to websites with gratuity or prohibited subjects.

You also need to be very clear about disclosing affiliate links whenever you advertise a product, as not doing so could be seen as false advertising and misleading.

Create Content That Converts

You’re not going to get anywhere with affiliate marketing if your audience isn't interested in you or your content (or ideally both). Therefore, creating a winning content strategy is essential for success.

You’ll need to have a clear understanding of what your audience wants. Short-form videos are generally very successful in 2025, but some audiences still value in-depth product reviews to help make buying decisions.

You also need to tread a fine line between advertising the product or service and pushing too hard for a sale. Audiences appreciate value-added content. If it’s very obvious that you’re just trying to sell them things for the sake of making money, it can be off-putting for many consumers.

Add Affiliate Links Strategically

The ultimate goal of affiliate marketing, aside from making money, is to give a clear indication that you’re using the product or service and enjoying it, and can therefore recommend it to your audience. So placing them at the end of a blog post or video is a good way to go.

You could also look to embed the link directly into your text or image. In the below example, from Travel and Leisure, the text here is the clickable affiliate link. It clearly indicates what the reader will see if they click through.

You could also embed links directly into CTA buttons within the blog or video description. These act as a direct instruction and will tell the reader exactly what’s going to happen once they click through. Make sure the link goes straight to the product or service page rather than a generic homepage, as you’ll want to remove as many hurdles as possible to making the sale.

Drive Traffic to Your Content

In order to get people to click on your links, they’re going to need to see your content in the first place. This is where you bring in your expert SEO skills to drive traffic to your website, blog post, or social media pages.

A growing number of consumers use mobile devices when they’re buying, so make sure your pages are optimized for mobile usage. Backlinks directly from other sources are a great way for building your website’s authority, so try to engage with other creators to develop mutual benefits.

You’ll also need to ensure that your keyword strategy is effective. The closer these phrases are related to the customer’s search query, the higher up your source will appear in search engine rankings. And the higher up the ranking, the more likely it is that a user will click on your page.

Astonishingly, over 99% of searchers only check the first page on Google, highlighting how important it is to be on there.

Follow Amazon’s Rules

Amazon is a highly-reputable business. They’ve achieved this through making sure that everyone who works with them follows their rules, without exception. Therefore, it’s important that you have a good understanding of their expectations.

Amazon provides all its affiliates with an Operating Agreement in order to gain a full understanding of how to use the program properly. It’s quite a hefty read, but it’s vital for making sure that you don’t inadvertently break a rule and undo all your hard work further down the line.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Without a Website: Is It Worth It?

It’s been a commonly held belief that in order to succeed with Amazon Associates, you need an established website from which to direct your audience members onto Amazon.

But with so much of what you could typically do on a dedicated website now being achieved across various social media platforms, that belief isn’t as clear cut as it once was.

So, is it possible to build a successful affiliate marketing business without even setting up your own website?

Amazon Affiliate Marketing on Facebook

There are over 3 billion Facebook profile pages on the website, and every one of them, in theory, could act as a source for affiliate marketing. There’s nothing stopping you from posting Amazon affiliate links directly on your profile page.

However, it’s more common to find them within Facebook groups, as they’re full of like-minded people who will likely be more interested in what you’re advertising.

It’s important to note that you cannot use affiliate links within paid Facebook ads as this is a restricted practice.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest

Pinterest was not a place where you could use Amazon affiliate links until quite recently. However, it can only be done through creating organic content on your Pinterest page and then attaching the links to Pins, which can be viewed by your audience.

Before setting up your affiliate links, you should make sure that you’ve claimed and verified your site, as it gives a more authentic and trustworthy feel to your content.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing on Instagram

Instagram is a very popular place for affiliate marketers. With such an emphasis on visual content and short-form videos, it’s a great place for instantly grabbing attention on products and services that you’re advertising.

You can include affiliate links in feed posts, Reels and Stories, and live videos. However, while there’s no official number, you might not be permitted by Amazon to use affiliate links if you have a follower count below 500.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing on YouTube

YouTube is another very popular outlet for Amazon affiliate programs. Many YouTube creators with a large audience will place affiliate links within the descriptions of their videos. Then they’ll take a couple of moments within the video to talk about the product.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing on TikTok

With TikTok, it’s slightly more complicated. They have two programs, the affiliate program and the influencer program, through which to make revenue. Fortunately, it is possible to start with the affiliate program with no followers.

While you cannot add clickable affiliate links to videos, you can include them via a third-party bridging page, such as LinkTree, on your TikTok profile. TikTok Shop is a rapidly growing area of revenue for the platform, so it makes sense that they’re more reluctant to facilitate Amazon affiliate links that take their users off the website.

SEO for Affiliate Marketing

We’ve briefly touched upon this in some of the other sections, but your success as an Amazon affiliate will largely be determined by how effective you are at getting attention onto your sites. This is especially true if you don’t already have a large audience to rely upon.

For this to happen, you need to understand the SEO practices that are most effective for delivering consistent affiliate marketing revenue.

Keyword Research That Targets Buyer Intent

Buyer intent keywords are the terms and phrases that indicate a user’s readiness to make a purchase. They can be classified into two groups - low-intent (commercial) or high-intent (transactional).

You need to try and make the most of both as part of your SEO strategy.

Low-intent keywords and phrases might include things such as ‘best of,’ ‘top 10’, or ‘review for.’ These searchers may not be completely sure what they’re looking for, and are still exploring. It’s why blog posts or videos with these terms in them tend to do very well for generating traffic.

High-intent keywords and phrases are more direct. They’ll include terms such as ‘buy’ or ‘discount.’ If a searcher is using these terms, it usually means they’re ready to buy. If you make it clear that by clicking onto your website you can make it very easy to find their perfect product (on Amazon), you’ll drive a lot of organic traffic to your pages.

Site Structure & Internal Linking

In order for search engines to be able to understand the structure of a website, businesses will use internal linking to create a map of pages that a search engine can read. The idea is that an internal link on a given page will still have relevance to the user, and so they’ll click through to that link as well. This increases overall engagement, which boosts search engine ranking.

You also need to try and achieve topical authority on your website. This is the process through which you convince a visitor that you have a deep understanding of a given subject area. If they’re interested in that area, they’re more likely to keep coming back whenever you post.

Through this process, trust is built up, which is essential for when you need to manage affiliate marketing progress.

On-Page Optimization for Affiliate Content

You’ve successfully managed to convince a search engine user to click onto your website. However, they’re not going to stick around for long if the website is slow, or the pages don’t load properly.

That’s why you’re going to make sure your website design is fully optimized so visitors won’t feel the urge to leave before they’ve even started to explore.

Things like ensuring that your keyword phrases are included within your page title, opening paragraph, and H2 headings are a good first step. But you also need to make sure that each page’s meta title, meta description, and optimized images with alt text are all as optimized as possible.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Monetization Strategies

The purpose of affiliate marketing is to generate revenue. But as with most things in life, there are better ways to go about it than others. We’ve highlighted some of the most effective monetization strategies that we think will lead to substantial positive results with Amazon Associates.

Maximize Clicks and Conversions

The best way of making sure customers are ending up on Amazon is to maximize the click-through rate on your links and other affiliate marketing KPIs. The best way to do that is to make sure your content is high in added value and customer reward. If they feel they’ve had a positive experience with your content, they’re more likely to trust you and click on your link.

Of course, getting the click through is only the first step. You still need the sale to convert in order to make money with affiliate marketing. So you need to make sure that the content you put out there is very closely aligned with audience expectations of a product or service. The last thing you want is for a customer to click through and be disappointed by the product page, because you haven’t advertised it accurately enough.

Link Localization & Tracking Tips

Amazon has an affiliate program available in thirteen countries. This means that if a customer not from one of those countries clicks on your affiliate link, and makes the purchase in their local store, you won’t receive the affiliate revenue.

It’s frustrating, but fortunately Amazon has created Amazon OneLink. This a global link that will take a customer through to the most relevant store that forms part of the affiliate program.

What Not to Do: Mistakes That Get You Banned

Amazon does everything in its power to help you succeed. After all, if you’re making money, then they’re making money as well.

However, that’s not to say that Amazon Associates will not strictly enforce the rules and take further action if required. This can include permanent bans from the program in the most serious circumstances.

For example, Amazon doesn’t allow something called cloaking to take place within their program. Within the context of Amazon Associates, cloaking is the act of obscuring the referring URL of the host site. Amazon doesn’t allow it when it’s not made explicitly clear that clicking through on a link will take the user through to Amazon’s own website.

Amazon also has a strict zero tolerance on fake reviews, which some affiliates may attempt to upload so that their recommendation looks more authoritative. 

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines

As well as Amazon having their own set of guidelines, there are also the overarching business practice standards that are set down by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It’s important that affiliate marketers have a good grasp of these standards, so that there’s no chance of ending up with civil penalties or injunctions.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Tools to Earn More Easy Money

Amazon works with a number of third-party software apps and companies to provide even more assistance to their affiliate marketers. Let’s take a look at some of the more prominent ones.

Lasso

Lasso is a WordPress plugin that marketers use to streamline the process of adding and managing their affiliate links. It allows users to directly add links into their WordPress blog posts and integrates automatically with Amazon, meaning any information you have on the product within your website updates automatically.

Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin (AAWP)

AAWP is a handy little plugin specifically built for the Amazon Associates program, giving affiliates more tools to use in their everyday marketing efforts. Features including tailored product boxes, sector bestseller lists, and comparison tables ensure that all affiliates are maximizing their potential profits at any given time.

Affilimate

Affilimate is an excellent tool for optimizing content specifically, meaning your links have a much better chance of being seen and actioned. It’s excellent for tracking and tweaking your links and gaining a deeper understanding of what content is working best at any given time. You can also gauge how effective your content updates are and whether they’re impacting your overall revenue.

Thirsty Affiliates

Remember when we mentioned how Amazon doesn’t like link cloaking? Well, here’s the solution!

Thirsty Affiliates offers smart uncloaking that is completely compliant with Amazon’s terms of service. You can also use it to proactively check your links and deploy an automatic 404 checker. It’s essentially a one-stop shop for keeping your link management streamlined and organized.

Final Thoughts

Amazon affiliate marketing has been a great way for influencers and talented salespeople to make a solid income for a number of years now. So you might think that it’s already too late to get on board.

But that is definitely not the case. There are always new products waiting to take off, new sectors to explore, and new strategies being devised. We firmly believe that by applying careful research and creating consistent, winning content, you’ll have an affiliate marketing strategy that gets you results in no time.