Boost Your Profit Margin with Amazon Associates

by Dana Lynn Smith

Here’s an easy way to earn a bit more profit from your sales on the world’s largest bookstore - join the Amazon Associates affiliate program. Even if you don’t have a book on Amazon, you can still profit from this program by promoting other books or products using your affiliate link.

Just sign up for an Associates account, then create affiliate links to place on your website for your own books and any other books or products you’d like to promote. As an Associate, you will earn a commission (called a referral fee) each time someone clicks on one of your affiliate links and purchases the product. This is extra revenue, above and beyond whatever you normally make when you sell a book on Amazon.com.

Even better, you’re paid a commission on anything else the customer purchases during the same shopping session on Amazon. So if they put your book in their shopping cart, then decide to purchase a Kindle, a new printer, or some vitamins, you get commissions on those items as well.

The amount of the commission depends on the type of product and your monthly sales volume, but it ranges from 4% to 10% of the total purchase made by the customer. You can read the fine print and find a commission chart here. Just remember that you can’t use your affiliate link when you make personal purchases on Amazon.

To get started, sign up for an Associates account at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/. Amazon sometimes prohibits residents of a handful of states from having an Associates account, due to conflict over state sales tax laws. The eligibility rules change periodically, so the best way to find out if you’re eligible is to fill out the enrollment form.

Once you sign up for an Amazon Associates account, you will be assigned an “Associates ID,” typically a string of numbers or letters ending in 20. To create a link that will give you credit for sales, use this template:

          http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=ASSOCIATESID

Using the above template, replace “ASSOCIATESID” with your own Amazon Associates ID. Replace “ASIN” in the template with the Amazon product ID. For printed books, use the ISBN-10 (10-digit ISBN). For ebooks and other products, look for the ASIN. The ISBN-10 or ASIN is located in the Product Details section of the product’s sales page on Amazon.com, as you can see in the screenshot below:

As an example, here’s the Associates link for my paperback book, How to Get Your Book Reviewed:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982380402/?tag=texanpubli-20

Check your product link to make sure there are no extra spaces, and test it to make sure it leads to the correct page on Amazon. There are also some link building tools on the Amazon Associates page, and you can even create banner ads or a whole store full of products.

You can use your Amazon Associates affiliate links any place on your website or blog where you link to your own book or to other products for sale on Amazon.com. Affiliate links can also be used in your ebooks, special reports, and other information products. If you're writing articles that will be used on other websites, make sure it’s okay to use affiliate links. For instance, EzineArticles.com forbids the inclusion of affiliate links, and if someone has paid you to write an article it probably wouldn't be acceptable to include affiliate links.

What other products could you promote? Feature complementary, non-competing books and other products that would appeal to the people who read your books. If you’re a cookbook author, you can link to your favorite cooking gadgets for sale on Amazon. If you’ve written a travel book or a book on photography, you could link to cameras. Think about how the product categories on Amazon.com tie to your book and use your imagination.

Now that you know how to get more profit from each customer you refer to Amazon, learn how to maximize your book sales on Amazon with my ebook, How to Sell More Books on Amazon.

Comments

[Jeri]

I wanted to sign-up for this, but North Carolina is one of something like six states who have tax laws that prohibit participation in online affiliate programs.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Jeri, thanks for your note. I'm sorry to hear that you can't sign up. Amazon has ongoing battles with several states over sales tax issues, but the list of states on the black list changes from time to time.

[J4Creativity]

Just wanted to make people aware of Amazons county click limitations.
It's not a problem, more an irritation.

For example if I only belong to Amazon UK but most of my readers are in the USA, when they purchase via my affiliate links I will not receive any commission.

I also need an Amazon.com affiliation in order to get paid. There is plenty of information on the web on how to handle this, a quick Google will find it.

So check your readership and target your affiliate links to the biggest demographic areas (you can get this information for free from Google analytics).

[Cat McMahon]

Thanks for the great suggestion, Dana. I went forward, applied and was approved. Now I earn commissions on top of royalties when customers click through me website to purchase my book on Amazon. com; a 2 or 1 is a great deal!