Setting Up an Amazon Affiliate Website

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Becoming an Amazon affiliate is one of the best strategies to work on when you want to make money online. As an Amazon affiliate, you’ll earn money by simply advertising Amazon’s products. There are several ways to do it, such as promoting through blogs and social media profiles, and all of them can be successful when done right.

What we’ve found is that the most successful way to earn money as an Amazon affiliate is by creating a dedicated Amazon affiliate website. An Amazon affiliate website is a site designed to market products from the Amazon marketplace in order to earn money from referral commissions.

If you haven’t yet created your Amazon account, check out our guide on setting up your Amazon Associates account before diving into the website-building process below you’ll need an active site to apply anyway.

The only catch is that you have to showcase these products in an organic way. Some of the most common practices include product reviews, comparisons, and top-rated product lists. That way, you can easily get people interested in the products on your site, place an Amazon Associates link to redirect them to make a purchase, and then cash in.

The Benefits of an Amazon Affiliate Website

  • Easy and cost-effective to start. Amazon affiliate websites are one of the easiest ways to start making money online. They’re simple to set up and don’t require a large upfront investment.
  • A streamlined earnings method. Unlike traditional affiliate marketing schemes, where you often have to heavily promote low-paying offers with your own money, Amazon affiliate websites are organically found by people already searching for the products you market meaning they’re ready to buy.
  • You earn on the full cart, not just the referred item. Amazon’s tracking cookie registers any purchase made by a customer who arrives at the marketplace through your link, and pays you a commission on the full amount spent, not just on the specific product they clicked.
  • Built-in trust. Amazon is already a trusted place to shop online, which makes affiliate websites promoting its products valuable and easy to monetize. Pick a good niche, fill your site with compelling content, and it’s realistic to reach earnings of $3,000 a month or more.

Setting Up an Amazon Affiliate Website

Creating an Amazon affiliate website is easier now than it’s ever been. Let’s walk through everything you’ll need to set up your first Amazon affiliate website, one step at a time.

Picking a Niche

You’ve probably heard this word thrown around a lot as you get into online marketing but what does it actually mean? A niche is the specific segment of the market that you decide to target. For example, if you decide to build a site around baby clothing, that’s your niche.

Picking the right niche can make a huge difference in both how much you earn and how much traffic your affiliate site gets. Some niches are considered large, others small. The video game niche, for instance, is huge, while something like octopus-shaped decor is tiny by comparison. Generally speaking, the bigger the niche, the more profitable it’s considered to be.

That said, keep in mind that average product price and average number of sales in your niche can have a bigger impact on your earnings than the raw size of the niche itself. If your niche has a huge market share but each sale only averages $3, you’ll need an enormous volume of sales to turn a decent profit. On the other hand, a small niche where each sale averages $4,000 can generate serious income with just a handful of sales per month.

It’s also worth picking a niche you’ll genuinely enjoy promoting. That authenticity comes through in your content, makes your site more authoritative over time, and ultimately makes it more appealing to visitors.

Choosing a Domain Name

Once you’ve picked your niche, it’s time to choose a domain name related to it. The domain name is simply your website’s address, and you can register one through a number of vendors online. We recommend Hostgator head over and click on “Domains.”

In the “Choose your new web address” field, enter the domain name you’d like to use and click “Search” to check availability. Once you find one that’s available, proceed to checkout.

Website Builder and Hosting

With your niche and domain name in place, it’s time to actually build the site. The easiest way to do this is with a content management system, and WordPress remains the most popular choice by far. You’ll also need a hosting service to host your website — Hostgator offers great hosting at a reasonable price, with a one-click WordPress installation option baked in.

You won’t need to juggle separate accounts for domain and hosting. Just head to Hostgator and click on “WordPress Hosting.” You’ll see three packages available; we recommend starting with the “Standard” plan.

This plan lets you install two WordPress sites on the same server useful if you decide to experiment with two different but promising niches at once. You’ll also get support for up to 200,000 visitors a month and 150 GB of storage space, which is plenty of room to grow.

Final Recommendations

  • Use an affiliate-friendly WordPress theme. Look for themes built specifically with affiliate content, comparison tables, and product review layouts in mind these make it much easier to present products in a way that converts.
  • Design assets can make a real difference. If you want to elevate your site’s visuals without hiring a designer, Envato Elements gives you access to millions of templates, graphics, and creative assets under a single subscription useful for building a more polished, professional-looking affiliate site.
  • Keep your site neatly organized. Make sure your links are easy to follow and that you use high-quality, appealing images throughout your content.
  • Make your affiliate links easy to find and click. A lot of affiliates lose significant earnings simply because visitors never click through their links. Don’t be shy about placing clear calls to action around your product recommendations.

Next Steps

Once your website is live and you’ve published a handful of quality articles, you’re ready to move on to actually applying for your Amazon Associates account. Check out our full walkthrough on setting up your Amazon Associates account to complete the process and start earning commissions.

This post contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through them.