subject: How to Start an Amazon Affiliate Store! [print this page] How to Start an Amazon Affiliate Store! How to Start an Amazon Affiliate Store!
Starting an affiliate store is super easy and can get you started making money fast. There are a few ways to go about it, but first as always, DO YOUR RESEARCH! Find a market that doesn't have much competition by using keyword research. You can use free tools to do your keyword research like Google Adwords keyword tool and Traffic Travis to find keywords related to your niche that don't have a lot of competition and use them in your site. The only thing that will get your amazon affiliate store up in the search results is making sure you do your SEO homework.
Where to start your amazon affiliate store
There are a few sites that you can get premade amazon affiliate store for really cheap. You can sometimes find stores that are already getting traffic on sites like ebay, but that is no guarantee. A site I have used in the past to get an affiliate store started is Dork Websites. They sell premade niche stores and blogs to get you started making some affiliate money. It is extremely simple and can be up and running in hours. This guide will be written using their site builder as a reference, but you can use any of the great products out there to make your amazon affiliate store.
First, choose your affiliate store niche.
Affiliate store list.
They have plenty to choose from, but if you don't like any of them, there are other products out there to promote. Once you have purchased your premade amazon affiliate store, you can set up hosting for your site and buy a domain name. Dork Websites can handle all of this for you and it is a great way to get started, but I would recommend moving your site to hosting like iPage so you have more customizability, but you can leave your hosting as it is for now.
Once you've set up your hosting and domain name, you can get started customizing your affiliate store. The first thing you will want to change is their awful default color scheme. Choose whatever colors you like, but make it more eye pleasing than bright purple with a rainbow header! Next, you will want to log in and familiarize yourself with your control panel. The default address for your control panel is www.yoursite.com/admin.php and Dork Websites will have sent you your username and password. I recommend changing both of them for security reasons.
Next, you will want to change the amazon information. It looks like this:
Amazon Affiliate Store Settings
You need to go to Amazon's affiliate program page and create an account. This will allow Amazon to track referrals you send their way. Then you will need to create an Amazon Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. For that, you will need to create an Amazon Web Services account. This will allow you to use Amazon's API to populate your Amazon affiliate store with products. This blog post has great instructions for how to set up your Amazon AWS stuff so check that out, get the info changed, then come back here. I'll wait...
Monetize your Amazon affiliate store!
Ok, now you've got your Amazon affiliate store set up and are ready to start making money items in your niche. But you may have noticed, there are already ads on your page! Where did they come from? Associate-o-matic (your amazon affiliate store builder) has their own ads by default. If you were to leave them on, it would make them some extra money on the side, which is pretty smart. But you want to make money for yourself, not for them, so let's get those changed. If you have already read my post about how to monetize your site, you'll know how to make affiliate ads related to your niche. If you have not read it yet, now is the time to choose some products to promote. Choose products that are relevant to your site and if possible, choose ones that create the banners for you.
The custom boxes page is where you will put your ad code. It looks like this:
Affiliate Store Custom Boxes
You'll notice that each of the boxes contains This is to help you know what size ads to put there. They recommend that you use certain companies, but it is your affiliate store, so do what you want with it!
Get traffic to your Amazon affiliate store!
Now what you need to do is get some traffic. I already laid out how to do that in my how to get traffic guide. Once you have traffic coming to your site, you'll start making money right away. There is nothing stopping you! Start right away!
What if I don't want an Amazon affiliate store?
That is ok, they aren't for everyone. Maybe you don't want to worry about promoting a store and answering customer questions. There are still awesome ways to promote Amazon and Ebay products. There is a plugin called phpzon/phpbay that will allow you to promote products right in your blog beautifully. They are pretty slick plugins that make amazing looking product links right in your blog.
So no matter what your preferences are, there are always ways to make money online that will cater to them. Experiment and try a few so you will know if an Amazon affiliate store is right for you or if you should just stick with a niche blog.
