Making Money on Amazon

This how to page is part of our how to make money online series featuring several different ways to establish a viable career online.

One method to create such a career online is to earn money by selling Amazon products. On this page, we will first look at the big picture about making money on Amazon as an Amazon Affiliate. Following that, we will introduce some sample scenarios on which you can earn money through the Amazon Affiliate program and then point you to videos and resources to help you get started.
Making Money on Amazon: The Big Picture

Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a hot product. How would you go about selling this product? Ideally, it will be placed in all of the shopping centers, outlet malls, and any other place that people would be willing to buy it. Essentially, the more people that you have selling your product, the more your product will sell.

Such is the nature of affiliate programs. As we looked at in the post how to make money on eBay, companies embrace the idea of affiliate programs because it extends their sales force exponentially.

And the Amazon Affiliate Program is one of the best, and most popular, in the business. This is a good news, bad news story.

The bad news first. Since the Amazon Affiliate Program is one of the most popular, the competition can be ferocious. You are literally competing against hundreds of thousands of people to sell products.

However, there is plenty of good news.

I will start off with what I believe to be the best news: Amazon sells way more than books. This may not be news to you but it IS news to millions of people. Many people still assume that Amazon is simply a place to go to buy books. However, Amazon now sells just about everything under the sun at the most competitive prices on the market. For example, did you know that you can buy refrigerators online at Amazon?

This breadth of product is important because Amazon has already established the most important component of selling online: Trust. People trust Amazon because they have been there before and, for the most part, everybody has had a pleasant experience. Thus, when the many people out there begin to buy more than books, they will already have a built-in trust with Amazon. They trust not only the Amazon.com name but they trust that they will be given the best price on Amazon.com.

Of course, Amazon.com is currently selling all of these products online. However, the market will simply explode year after year as people begin buying more and more items online.  Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and already regarded as one of the great thinkers of our time, continually points out this huge potential and promises to continue this tradition of amazing customer service at the best prices.  Thus, it’s fair to say that the Amazon.com marketplace is still in its infancy.

And so, while there are many competitors, this growing market is still ripe for those who want to make a part or full time career online thorough the Amazon Affiliate Program.

Let’s now take a look at how the systems works.  How can you actually make money through the Amazon Affiliate Program?
Making Money Online As An Amazon Affiliate

The concept of making money online as an Amazon Affiliate is fairly easy. It works as follows. You place a link to an Amazon page on your website and, when someone clicks through AND buys that product, you receive a commission based on a percentage of the sale. The commission varies depending on two factors: (1) What type of product it is and (2) sales volume.

For example, for LCD TVs and other electronics, the commission is a flat 4% independent of sales volume and sometimes capped at $25. For other products, such as the Amazon Kindle, the commission is 10% always. Most products, however, have a sliding scale that begins at 4% (with 6 items sold or under), then goes to 6% (between 7 and 30 products sold), and all the way up to 8.5% for the big sellers. These commissions are part of what Amazon calls the performance fee structure which is the one that most people choose.

Steps to Become An Amazon Affiliate

For those interested in making money on Amazon, the steps to become an Amazon Affiliate are actually very simple. You can begin right away with these two steps:
Step One: Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program here.
Step Two: Create a Website. This is actually easier than most people think if you use free services. Two good, free ones to begin with are WordPress.com or Blogger.com, which is Google’s Free Blog Platform. Personally, I prefer WordPress as they have many more options to make your blog look outstanding. Additionally, in the how to videos section below, you will see how you do not even need to create a website…you can do it through Amazon with what is called an Amazon a Store.