Amazon has a pretty incredible affiliate program. It’s a favorite of many online marketers for a reason. Some people focus on it pretty exclusively while others just use it here and there on blog posts and articles where it makes sense to.
You want to earn more passive income, so the Amazon associates program seems to be calling your name. But, can you really earn enough with the program to make a difference? Can you really earn a great passive income with Amazon?
The thing you should know upfront is that earning with Amazon isn’t like earning as an affiliate with digital products. They aren’t going to hand you 50% of every sale or anything anywhere close to that. You’re going to earn a pretty small portion of each sale– just 4%, when you’re first starting out. That can hardly seem worth it.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you aren’t only earning on the thing you’re promoting with Amazon. So while it might be cool that you can earn 50% of the profit by promoting an ebook, you can earn on someone’s entire CART when you promote Amazon. Let’s say they buy 25 different things, really filling their cart up. You earn on all of that.
Let’s say 25 people buy 20 different things in a day. You earn on all of that. And your earnings and the percentage you earn as an Amazon associate increases the more you sell. Double check with Amazon once you sign up as an Associate and make sure you sign up with the sliding scale option rather than the flat percentage option so you can take advantage of this.
As you can see by now, much of this is a numbers game. You can earn a great income with Amazon if you can get your links in front of a lot of people and promote in categories where people are likely to fill their carts up. There are certainly many Amazon affiliates who are earning fantastic incomes, some very quietly and happily, and who have been doing so for years.
Sign Up With Amazon
What you’re going to be doing here is setting up websites that are focused on physical products and goods. You’ll write about products and review products and place your Amazon associate links on your site or sites.
You have to sign up with and be approved as an Amazon associate first, of course. This isn’t a difficult process but you will have to have something to show Amazon. What many people who don’t really have a site at this point have done in the past is set up a little blogger.com blog, put up a few posts, and used that to apply with Amazon. That, according to some, seems to help people get through the approval stages more quickly.
Before you apply and while you wait for approval from Amazon, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with all of the rules and guidelines Amazon has for their Associates. They can be quite strict but are generally pretty fair.
Choosing a General Niche
What do you want to promote? We’ve talked about the fact that it can take selling a lot of items through your link to earn any sort of income with Amazon.
But there are other ways to earn more. There are some people who focus on bigger ticket items on Amazon and earn a great income that way. Amazon sells things like pricey electronics and even home appliances and things like that. It’s certainly worth looking into.
It can be well worth your time to do a little digging. Which products will you be interested in researching and writing about? Will you create several mini product sites or would you rather focus on a larger product site or two?
Look at the competition. You want to know that there are other affiliates out there who are doing a good job with this. If there are Amazon affiliates out there who are in a certain niche or who are promoting certain types of products for months or years and are putting work into their site, it’s a solid bet they are earning with them. Check their rankings.
How You Earn Passively With Amazon Sites
This is all about content. When you build these ‘Amazon’ sites, you’re building sites that are filled with content that are going to help people with their buying decision.
You’re catching buyers who are typing product names or types of products into Google, hoping to find more information out about them. They might be looking for product comparisons, helpful reviews, personal opinions, or just a real human to sway them one way or the other. You’re that human.
Put some personality into your content. Set your site apart from others out there. Do what you can to get your site to rank in the search engines. Part of how you do that is by getting a lot of relevant content out there.
If you get a lot of relevant content out about a group of products, type of products, niche, company, product name, etc. (and you’re really, really specific), then you’re going to start to rank for these things in the search engines.
Make it clear that you care about the real people who are reading your content. If you do that, then they’ll want to read what you have to say.
Throughout your content, use clear pictures and links. Amazon allows you as the associate to use their product pictures throughout your content. They will give you the affiliate links to use as well.
Give people a call to action to click through your links to buy on Amazon. You must tell people that you are an Amazon Associate– Amazon is clear about this.
Having a lot of great, clear, helpful content out there, filled with your Amazon links, and ranking in Google, is how you earn an excellent passive income.
The Mechanics of Getting Started
So, go ahead and get started. Choose your niche and/or product type. Set up your website– your own website. Your blogger website (if you used that method to get approved) should be just a starter. You want to own and have complete control over your website. Select a group of 5 or so products and start writing about them and reviewing them.
Interact with your audience. Get involved on social media. Build your site up over time. Really put some elbow grease into this, especially in the beginning.
Don’t move on to another bright shiny object– get traffic and income coming in. Soon enough, the income will be more passive and you can add some content here and there and the site will generate income even if you aren’t giving it your full attention.
This isn’t a difficult method at all. It works just as well as it always has as long as you focus on the people and focus on really high quality content.
You’ll notice that your Amazon links sell better at certain times, like Christmas. You can sit back and have a fantastic payday that really makes it all worth it.
Buying Ready-Made Income Producing Websites for Passive Income
If you’re interested in earning a passive income as quickly as possible, then it might make sense to buy or invest in something that’s already producing an income. You can then grow that income-producing asset into something even greater. Since you’re an online marketer, it makes sense to consider buying ready-made income producing websites for passive income.
You’re probably well aware that many marketers get distracted by bright shiny objects. They might start building websites for affiliate income or ad income but then get distracted by other things. So, there are lots of these low-income producing websites out there that aren’t earning their owners very much at all, but have huge, huge potential for real earnings.
Originally, their owners did a lot of research and hard work creating the website. They did everything right at first, but ran out of gas to keep on going. That’s okay—because now you can buy the site and take over. You can buy sites like this very inexpensively.
There are other website owners that just want to move on. Maybe they continue to work hard on their site and it is income-producing, but they are ready to sell it. Sites like this come with a higher price tag, but can be even higher income producing.
There are still others that are already earning a full-time income. These are full businesses that are ready to go. For the right price, the owners are willing to sell these businesses to the right owner.
No matter what type of site you choose, there are plenty of sites out there for sale. These ready-made sites save you a lot of time and frustration. You don’t have to build a site from scratch yourself. You don’t have to wait for traffic and income. Everything is done for you. You just have to take the site from where it is now and turn it into something even better. Or, if it’s already doing great, you just have to keep it going.
Where do you buy a site like this? There are many different paths you can take. You can often find sites for sale on marketing forums like WarriorForum.com and Earn1KaDay.com.
However, the most popular spot is probably Flippa.com. This is a site that is solely dedicated to selling websites and online business. You can easily search through and find exactly the type of site you’re looking for, for the price you’re willing to pay.
You can even approach site owners if there’s a site you have your eye on. If there’s one that seems abandoned but has great promise, you might find that the site owner is more than willing to sell it to you. Many site owners will sell to you if the price is right, no matter how active they are with their site.
Once you have the site, it’s completely up to you how involved you become with it. You can create new content for it, for sure, and probably should. This is something you’ll want to do on a regular basis as this is something that will improve just about any site.
You’ll want to change over the contact and ‘about’ information and all of the legal information and things like that.
Remember to change over the affiliate information and any product sales information. You’d be surprised how many buy sites and don’t pay attention to things like this.
Make sure you actively drive traffic to the site you buy. You don’t want to invest in a site and then forget about it, letting it fall off worse than it was when you bought it. You want your investment to grow and become even more of an income producer.
You can keep the site indefinitely or even ‘flip’ it yourself to another buyer in the future. You can turn this into a great business. You can buy sites for low, fix them up and get them earning, then sell them for a higher price.
Or, you can buy many sites and get them all earning you a great passive income over time.
Or, you can buy just one site that you put your all into and get it providing you a great passive income.
This is all up to you. Know that you will have to put some work in—but much less than you would if you were building a site from scratch on your own.
It is important that you make sure you can trust the seller when you’re buying a site. That can be one reason to go with a site like Flippa, because there are protections like Escrow in place. You don’t want to buy a site, only to not have it turned over to you. There have been some unfortunate nightmares when it comes to buying sites—but you can protect yourself if you buy smartly.
Start to do some searching to see what appeals to you and what fits in with your current business model. What do you think will be a big earner for you? What will you be able and interested in maintaining over time?
You might choose to hire someone to help you with the site transfer. You might hire someone to help you with the content and traffic generation. Really, you can outsource everything related to the site and turn this into a completely passive income stream.
Don’t hesitate to give this business model a try. It’s one of those online business models that’s been around forever and people have been very successful with it, but it’s somehow very underused. There are people very quietly making some great money this way.
There’s a low barrier to entry. You can get started with a low investment or with a larger investment—whatever works for you. Buying ready-made sites is a time saver—a way to start earning a passive income without having to play the waiting game like you would if you were creating a site from scratch on your own.