Amazon affiliate marketing is debatably the largest online affiliate program in the industry.
You can choose from a variety of niches (or topics) that allow you to advertise to your customers.
But what do you do if you don’t have a website or client base to sell to?
You’re in luck! You can still sign up and make a decent commission.
To start Amazon affiliate marketing without a website, you’ll need to pick a niche, choose your marketing platform, and then start researching keywords. Next, choose specific products to review for your commission and start posting content regularly.
Throughout this article, you’ll also learn the following details about using amazon’s affiliate program without a website:
- Step-by-step instructions for the best results and highest sales
- How to avoid the most common mistakes
- Different methods to choose a niche and market Amazon’s products.
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Start by Picking a Niche
Your niche is the most important part of this process, which is why it’s at the top of the list. If you don’t already know, a niche is a subject or topic that you choose to base your business around. One of the most important rules to keep in mind is that there are countless saturated niches across the marketplace.
A saturated marketplace is one that’s filled with too much competition. When you’re first starting out, you won’t be able to contend with the major corporations.
Hop onto Amazon’s affiliate marketing page, then consider looking through the various niches. Once you’re sure that it’s not saturated, you can head onto the next step.
Here’s a list of saturated niches to avoid:
- Medical
- Pet training
- Diets
- Fitness
- Health
- Recipes
There are many others as well. Instead of choosing a broad topic that you know a lot about, try to dive deeper. For example, if you enjoy automobiles, narrow it down to repairing automobiles from the 60s, or how to upgrade the interior of your vehicle.
Although it might seem like there’s such a small list of relative products, you’d be surprised how much affiliate marketing can be done through the form of a single narrow niche.
Let’s review a list of niches below that you could try.
- Lifestyle
- New technology
- DIY
- Parenting
- Fashion
- Interior decor
- Personal finance
You should remember that you can technically succeed in any niche; Some will just be significantly harder than others. It’s also worth mentioning that almost any affiliate program around isn’t an overnight success. You’ll have to put hours and hours of work for months or years before you receive a full-time income.
Nevertheless, don’t let it discourage you. When you’re choosing a niche, try to pick something that you’re highly passionate about, then narrow it down to your favorite parts of the subject.
Lastly, ensure that it’s marketable with numerous products. Certain niches don’t have enough sellable items on Amazon, so try to come up with a few ideas before you get started.
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Market on YouTube
YouTube is an incredibly popular site for marketing your affiliate products. You don’t need your own website, nor do you even have to create a brand.
Making money with Amazon affiliate marketing on YouTube is a common method because it’s virtually free and requires very little time compared to other methods.
For example, growing your own website can take a year or more to get off the ground. Meanwhile, a successful YouTube channel can get running in a matter of weeks or months.
Here’s how you can market on YouTube:
- Create a YouTube channel using your name or your company’s name. Again, you don’t need an official business or brand to affiliate market on YouTube. Try to make an attractive, eye-catching logo and a banner so people will want to stick around. You’ll also need to make sure that it’s related to your niche.
- Upload videos on a regular schedule. For example, many popular creators stick to two videos per week, such as Monday and Friday. Maintaining a schedule not only keeps you on track, but it also lets your audience know that they can depend on your for valuable content often.
- Make some videos about products, others about specific niche-related subjects, and a few vlogs to show your personal life. People don’t want to subscribe to your channel if it’s always an obvious advertisement. Try to only make an affiliate video a few times per month to keep it genuine.
- Describe the product and monetize it by hyperlinking it in the video’s description with your affiliate tag. You can add affiliate links to your channel and videos, but make sure they abide by YouTube’s terms of service. They usually don’t mind, but you need to keep questionable or offensive content off of your profile.
- Talk about products randomly when you’re referring to a topic. You don’t need to always make product review videos to sell for a commission. Instead, you can talk about a subject, then shortly recommend a product that’s helped you. These short and sweet pitches in a helpful tutorial are usually the best converters.
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Make Use of Forums
Thirsty Affiliates mentioned that forums and other online communities could be a hidden gem in the affiliate marketing community. If the idea of posting a single link in multiple forums sounds too good to be true, it is.
You can’t spam your affiliate products on a plethora of online communities for three reasons:
- It’ll be seen as invasive spam, resulting in you getting banned from the forum. Even if your intentions and methods change later, you’ll have lost out on a massive potential stream of income and customers.
- Nobody honestly clicks on a link sent my a random stranger and wants to buy a product. Think about how many times you receive spam calls, see ads that you don’t want to deal with, or get suggested products online. They never work, and they never will.
- If you don’t make a sale within the first six months of your affiliate program membership, Amazon usually closes it down. You can apply to start up again, but these tactics simply won’t help you at all. Furthermore, if Amazon cancels your membership, all of your links from the account are removed from the internet.
Instead of diving in and linking everywhere that you can type, you need to be a contributing member of the community.
If you’re posting helpful content and provide real knowledge and insight, people will see you as a beacon of assistance rather than a hungry salesman.
You’ll be able to make product suggestions to solve other members’ problems.
For instance, if someone mentions that they can’t get their pomade to work in their hair, you could suggest a unique technique followed by your personal pomade preference that you use at home. Don’t add the price or anything other than how and why you use it.
Note: As with any product online, it’s a great practice to always purchase and use the items that you recommend. If you’re not able to use or buy them, then you should at least have hands-on experience in the past or an idea of how they work.
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Write an Ebook Series
Ebooks have been a hot topic for over a decade.
Since the release of Kindle and other popular brands, people have been reaching to get their favorite classics on their tablets.
However, Ebooks also opened a door for affiliate markets in many ways.
You can hyperlink your Amazon affiliate links into an Ebook, sending readers directly to Amazon.
Never spam links, and only add one or two throughout the book. They shouldn’t feel like they’re buying one product just to be tricked into getting another.
One of the best ways to do this is to make a ‘How-to’ tutorial Ebook.
Many of these books are simple with unsaturated markets.
People often think that Ebooks are professional and go through all sorts of publishers, but the truth is that Amazon allows you to self-publish your own Ebooks right from home.
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What is KDP?
Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s self-publishing platform. It’s a gateway for people like you who want to become authors for creativity, money, fame, or all of the above. This program broke the barrier that caused many people to steer clear of writing in general.
When you write an Ebook on this platform, you can hyperlink to your Amazon affiliate items just as you would anywhere else. Since most E-readers have internet access, the transition will be seamless.
If you follow the aforementioned recommendation of a ‘How-to’ Ebook, you can accomplish this quite easily.
Here’s a quick example:
Let’s say you want to write an Ebook about how to become an acoustic guitar player. You could write all of the chapters and subheadings as you normally would, but when it comes time to recommend a guitar, you simply link to the Amazon page.
Readers can then choose to buy the guitar right then and there. You’ll receive a commission, allowing you to make additional money outside of your Ebook
Don’t forget about the breadcrumb products, either.
Low-cost items typically have higher conversion rates.
In the example above, you could sell guitar strings, cleaning oil, or tuning pegs. The possibilities are endless.
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Follow Up with an Email Trail
Email marketing with your affiliate membership can grant you an unending supply of income.
Many affiliate marketers and bloggers lean toward an email subscriber base.
There are plenty of ways to get people to sign up for your email list, including:
- Add the email subscription to your YouTube channel. All of your subscribers and viewers will be able to sign up for helpful emails. As always, make sure you’re providing unique content that can’t be found anywhere else. You need to give them a reason to stick around and read each email.
- Mention it randomly when you’re working on a forum. If you’re helping people in the community, you could suggest that they review your free email list to always stay updated on a certain topic that you excel at. They’ll love to learn more, especially since they don’t have to pay for it.
- Include your email lists in your Ebooks. If you decide to become a self-published author, you can add the email subscription link to the conclusion of the Ebook. They can sign up, which will bring hundreds or thousands of monthly subscribers if you sell the Ebook correctly.
If you have an email list of hundreds, thousands, or millions of subscribers, you can’t add an Amazon affiliate link to every email.
Send out weekly or bi-weekly newsletters, ensuring that you only add a link once per month.
This process might seem tedious and long-term, but it’s far more than worth it.
Consider the fact that your subscribers trust you as a source of information. When you tell them that you recommend a product, they’ll know that you know what you’re talking about.
When you spam links too often, they’ll lose interest and trust.
Are you searching for an email service? Mailchimp offers an excellent program that you can sign up for free.
Get your email list going and start adding subscribers right away.
They have templates, scheduled posts, and all sorts of helpful tools for beginners and affiliate marketers as well.
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Try Social Media Affiliate Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are household brands these days.
With billions of active users, you’ll have a massive pool of potential earnings.
That being said, you can’t dive head-first, spamming the channels, and isolating yourself from anyone who might’ve listened.
Instead, you’ll have to clear a path and make a name for yourself first. This process could take well over a year, but the results could mean you quit your day job.
Twitter for Amazon Affiliate Sales
Twitter is easy to use affiliate marketing with since all you have to do is post a hyperlink in a tweet.
Once you’ve got enough followers and clout in a niche, you can suggest products through informative posts fairly quickly.
They even allow you to include an image as well.
Is Facebook Still Worth Using?
Facebook was once considered the king of social media, and it still is when it comes to user accounts.
However, many of the accounts are inactive, and it’s a bit hard to use Amazon links on Facebook due to the algorithm.
Facebook doesn’t want people leaving their site, so your external links will often go unseen or buried below everything else.
Nevertheless, Facebook is still a viable option if you’re willing to spend a lot of time growing an audience.
The undeniable benefit of starting your own community on the social media platform means you can practically grow your own forum without spending a dime.
Once the community has grown enough, you can make various product suggestions.
Instagram’s Affiliate Dilemma
Instagram is based on photographs.
You’re not able to make simple text posts, which presents a bit of an issue for affiliate marketers. However, you can take advantage of the platform by posting vibrant, eye-catching photos of the products that you want to sell.
It’s essential that you purchase the products so you can take your own photos. People will instantly realize when you’re dragging pictures off of the Amazon product page, which will ruin their trust in you.
Use Hubpages
Hubpages was once an incredibly popular place for writers to gather and share their invaluable information. It’s still very popular, but self-made blogs have filled the cracks on the internet.
It’s not very common that you’ll see a Hubpages post on the Google search research, which drags down your potential audience drastically.
However, there are still quite a few people who use Hubpages.
If you write a post on their website, you’ll still be publishing helpful content to its users. Those who sift through the page and try to help others will come across your post.
Hubpages has a unique Amazon affiliate link integration system that allows you to seamlessly link to your affiliate products.
It takes little to no time, allowing you to publish dozens of posts per week. Once you’ve gathered hundreds of info-packed posts on Hubpages, you’ll start to see a decent income flow through.
It should be noted that it takes a while for your posts to rank and show up on Hubpages.
People need to enjoy it and mark it as helpful. If your links are too spammy, then you likely won’t see as much success.
There’s a writer ranking system that makes it so people can see if you’re a truly helpful writer. Those who spam links too often will be marked as such.
The best part about using Hubpages is that you actually don’t have to stick to one niche. You can write about whatever is on your mind.
The pages aren’t linked to each other, which means you’ll have free reign over everything you write about. One day you could suggest tips about how trains work, and another day you could recommend that someone try your favorite gaming chair.
Research Keywords Heavily
According to Medium, keywords are going to be a crucial part of your affiliate business.
You need to know what people are searching for, why they’re searching, and what information they need in order to feel satisfied.
Most people don’t type in something they want to buy; It’s usually a question that can be solved with a product as the answer.
Keep these five helpful tips in mind when you’re researching keywords:
- Find out what’s getting a lot of traffic. If you’re not sure where to start, type something in the Google search bar. The autofill will make suggestions, which you can then use to know what people are looking for. Allow the autofill to find keywords that you can try on the various platforms above.
- Make sure that there’s not too much competition. Niche saturation occurs when everyone goes for the same questions, answers, and products. You’ve probably heard about different diet plans a million times, but what about a specific type of knife holder for your kitchen?
- Find out how you’ll incorporate the keywords. Not all keywords are related to products. You need to make sure that the topic can be answered with an informative statement while also leaving room for a product suggestion. When something can be simplified or solved with a product, it should be added to your keyword list.
- Understand that it won’t always work in your favor. Take a chance with big keywords that have a bit of competition, but don’t expect them to be your top earners. The low-hanging fruit should be your focus, so look for those unanswered problems that people are yearning to solve.
- Make a list of 50 to 100 keywords that you can run through the previous four steps with success. Does it help to answer a question? Is there too much competition? Are people actually searching for reviews or advice about the topic? These questions should all be answered before you add something to the keyword list.
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Choose Products to Review
Once you’ve solved your keyword dilemma and made a decent list, it’s time to start choosing the products.
Remember to choose a variety of items with a wide range of prices.
Small sales on budget-friendly items that net you $1 per sale might end up making you more money in the long-run.
People are much more likely to buy a cheap, quick fix than they are to sink their bank account savings into the recommendation of an internet stranger.
On the other hand, try using a few expensive links that might turn heads. You never know when you can make a few hundred dollars on an Amazon affiliate sale.
Sometimes, these random once-per-month sales can be a dependable large portion of your monthly income. In short, try products with all prices instead of sticking to one or the other.
The reason that you want to choose the products after doing the keyword research is, so you know what people are looking for.
Picking out the items before the keywords would be like blindly throwing darts and hoping they stick.
Once you know that people need to know why their dishes aren’t getting clean enough, or why their guitar buzzes, or how they can fix a squeaky door, you can start to find the products to solve those problems.
The best way to choose the products is to look around your house.
What do you have that helped you tremendously within the niche? These everyday items might seem unimportant to you, but they could be a huge help for others.
As a final bit of advice, choose products that have at least 4/5 stars on Amazon.
The customer base of Amazon is honest and often brutally transparent with their reviews.
Potential buyers don’t want to invest in something that tears easily or breaks apart after a few uses.
Read through the reviews, then proceed to link the product.
Common Mistakes
Affiliate marketing without a website isn’t as complicated as it seems.
You don’t need a thriving blog or a long-term business to start making money from Amazon.
However, there are a few hiccups that you’ll inevitably run into.
To save you some time and frustration, let’s break down a handful of mistakes that you can avoid when you’re starting out:
- Never spam links. As you’ve hopefully gathered from this article so far, spamming affiliate links is a huge problem in the affiliate community. Beginners will post their links everywhere, getting them banned and reported on numerous platforms. It’s not a good business practice, to say the least.
- Remember to get your link from your Amazon affiliate page. You can’t use the regular URL to get a commission from Amazon. If you do this, you’ll send people to the page without generating a tracking cookie to get yourself paid. You could be missing out on dozens of sales.
- Take your time; It’s a long process. Nobody ever claimed that Amazon’s affiliate programs were fast and easy; If they were, everyone would be doing it. You’ll need to spend a lot of time perfecting the craft, generating leads, building email lists, and trying different platforms to see what works.
- Always be honest. Honesty is the most underrated part of affiliate marketing. Especially if you don’t have a website or brand to build credibility, you need to become a trustworthy source wherever you go. People will immediately put you off and ignore your links if you’re not truthful with them.
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Conclusion
Amazon’s affiliate program works excellently with websites, but you don’t need one to start making money.
You can try all sorts of different avenues, including forums, Ebooks, email lists, and more.
Remember that it’s a long-term process, so you’ll have to remain persistent to start seeing results.
As long as you’re honest, informative, helpful, and not spammy or money-hungry, you’ll eventually see success with Amazon’s affiliate marketing.
Best of luck, and remember to build yourself in a specific niche to gain clout, recognition, and trust!
Sources
Medium – How to Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Marketing Without a Website
Thirsty Affiliates – Can I Do Affiliate Marketing Without a Website?
Solopreneur Institute – Affiliate Marketing without a Website