How to build High Converting Amazon Affiliate Pages

Amazon makes it very easy for affiliates to promote their products. You can use any of their locations even if you live and work elsewhere.

Learn how to construct really easy-to-build product pages with all the advantages of Amazon’s affiliate network services.

Affiliates like to promote products with a good commission. Although Amazon recently lowered its rates, it still has an enormous number of very popular products, at a price where you can earn a good commission. 

There are a  number of ways to construct Amazon affiliate links, some manual and some via their API ( Application Program Interface ). For beginners with no affiliate income yet,  I detail different methods, from simple sitestripe, to how to use the API, which is the best, most versatile method completely free, including tracking

Convert Your Pages into Sales

It all comes down to conversion.

You need:

  • Size – lots of products
  • Trust – customers like & trust Amazon
  • Delivery – Quick, easy to return
  • many wealthy, English Speaking Countries
  • Easy to buy online, with payment cards

Amazon is Big. Incredibly big. It made Jeff Bezos the richest store owner in the world and it’s possibly the biggest store in the world, certainly in the west. 

Amazon is trusted throughout the world. Their main locations USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are all English-speaking countries. 

No other online shop has as many people signed up, ready to purchase, with payment cards registered on-site.

So the barriers that affiliates usually have to overcome are so much smaller using Amazon

Joining Amazon Associates

Amazon has one of the easiest affiliate programs to join. There are no barriers to entry, just find the Associates link in the site map and fill in your details. 

Make sure your payment details are correct, or you won’t get paid!

How to Find Popular Products to Promote

First check the commission rate, then search Amazon for best sellers. Try to select a niche or sub niche that is on the rise in popularity, check with Google trends, against similar niches.

Be sure that there are a lot of competing products and all are available now. Look out especially for:-

  • #1 Best Seller
  • 5 Star Reviews
  • 1000+ sales
  • Priced $130 +
  • Well known Brands

Multiply the price with the commission rate to find what you will earn per sale. As a rough guide, for example, kitchen equipment 4% commission, you need to be  aiming at goods around 100 to 200 pounds 

Are there other products that will go with your choice? It is better to have a cluster of products in a niche than just one.

For a new site, without traffic (visitors) it would be difficult to earn enough from one site, so if you cannot find 2 or more related niches to put on your site, it may be worth considering separate sites. 

AmazonCommission

Product CategoryRate
Amazon Games20.00%
Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty, Amazon Explore10.00%
Shoes, Handbags & Accessories4.00%
Office Products4.00%
Kitchen4.50%
Home3.00%
Home Improvement3.00%
Beauty3.00%
Business & Industrial Supplies3.00%
Digital Music, Physical Music, Handmade, Digital Videos5.00%
Physical Books, Automotive 4.50%
Amazon Fire Tablet Devices, Amazon Kindle Devices, Amazon Fashion Women's, Men's & Kids Private Label, Luxury Stores Fashion, Apparel, Amazon Cloud Cam Devices, Fire TV Edition Smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV Devices, Amazon Echo Devices, Ring Devices, Watches, Jewelry, Luggage4.00%
Toys, Furniture, Lawn & Garden, Pets Products, Headphones, Musical Instruments, Outdoors, Tools, Sports, Baby Products, Amazon Coins3.00%
PC, PC Components, DVD & Blu-Ray2.50%
Health & Personal Care1.00%
Televisions, Digital Video Games2.00%
Amazon Fresh, Physical Video Games & Video Game Consoles, Grocery1.00%
Gift Cards; Wireless Service Plans; Alcoholic Beverages; Digital Kindle Products purchased as a subscription; Food prepared and delivered from a restaurant; Amazon Appstore, Prime Now, or Amazon Pay Places0.00%
All Other Categories4.00%

How to Build Product Pages

There are many ways to Build Product pages and Promote them, the most popular are

  1. Review Pages in a  Niche blog
  2. How To articles
  3. Build Landing Pages and link with Ads

Your Affiliate Links

Types of Amazon Affiliate Links:

  1. Sitestripe
  2. Shopping Ad
  3. API

To use their normal (Sitestripe and Shopping Ad)  affiliate links there is no barrier to entry.

To use their API access ( linking via programmed links ) you will have to make 3 sales within a certain time to qualify and access the necessary keys. 

Programmatic API access is by far the  most versatile, you can AB  test different link formats against each other easily. The  links are created by a program, which fills in your parameters automatically. Doing this manually is tedious and prone to errors. 

1. SiteStripe Links

Once you’re logged into your Amazon account, and on a product page, you should see the sitestripe appear at the top of the page. If not then check the settings, it may be hidden.

In all the examples, simply copy the code provided,  (shown in yellow), and paste it into your article.  

The simplest link is the text link

This link will give you an image only. 

There are 3 size options

This link will give you an Image Title and Price and is the most used of the site stripe links. 

Check the “new tab” and “border” options to ensure the visitor stays on your site and the link has a simple border round it.

All of the above, are served direct from Amazon Web Services and you can be sure the price is correct – very important.

The account details ( your Amazon associates id ) is contained within the code, giving you credit for any sale that occurs.

2. Shopping Ad Links

These ‘native’ type Ads are proving popular, they are just as easy as all of the above to  render,  by simply copying the code into your web page. They are much more versatile and contain a better set of images and text, conversions from these  is usually higher  than anything else. Unfortunately at the moment ( April 2022 ) this is only on the US site stripe

These are versatile and have a horizontal format. This complements the vertical Image-and-Text link type format

3. API Links

Application Programming Interfaces are a way to communicate with online services, in this case, Amazon’s own database of products complete with products, prices, (list and current), product images, product descriptions, stock levels, and a whole lot more.

Amazon does a good job to make access fairly easy for a programmer to use. A typical example would be a request for product description and price, entering at an “endpoint” URL, the programmer needs authentication, using 2 keys, one an access key, the other a secret key, then the query which must be in a certain format. 

The returning data is in JSON format,  Javascript Object Notation, and can be used to display whatever you need.

For non-programmers, access is through one of the many available WordPress plugins. Most of these are paid access, some have free access, but are limited in some way

  •  Pretty Links Pro ( from $49 )
  • AAWP ( from $46 ) 
  • Amazon Auto Links ( free up to 3 products , then $45 up ) 
  • EasyAzon ( free but links are limited ) 
To see how I use the API, join my training program, where I show you how to use a WP- API plugin for free, track sales from any link, AND display in any format that you can easily design with Elementor.
 

Tracking Sales and Improving Conversions

Along with your Associates ID, which might be 

myAssocID-21 ( for UK sites this ends in -21, for US its -20 )

There is also a tracking id,  which you can  specify, within any of the links above. It can be anything you like, so “blenders” might be ok for a food blender site. However, this  ok to check the sales from links site-wide, but due to restrictions of the number you can create on Amazon, you couldn’t have tracking id per page, so if you’re linking from several pages to one product, you wouldn’t be  able to tell where the sale came from, just looking at the Amazon statistics ( RHSide of the site stripe )

For more detailed analysis, I would suggest BeMob tracker,  AdTrackerGold or even the Redirection plugin from WordPress. All these can be set up per link, giving you a break down of  where to spend your time, improving conversions. More information can be found on these  tools in the marketing tools section

Improving conversions using Cookie type

Almost all the programs I have seen to access the Amazon API, take the user to the Amazon page. By using the add-to-cart button code, you can increase the 24-hour amazon cookie length to almost  90 days. 

This is much better, as many people will come back to Amazon to purchase, after talking with partners, doing more research, etc. which may take longer than 24 hours and so lose the affiliate, the commission they have rightfully earned.