Do you want to build an Amazon affiliate website with WordPress? This is a fantastic way to start earning money without investing capital upfront. Affiliate marketing allows you to sell products from an external website while earning a commission off each sale generated. Amazon offers one of the most popular and largest affiliate programs. Combined with WordPress and its powerful open-source software, you can easily start earning money online in no time. Just like any sustainable stream of legitimate income, Amazon affiliate marketing requires some work to get started. To succeed, you’ll need to learn the tricks of the trade and identify the key resources for building a ‘perfect’ affiliate store. Luckily, the learning curve isn’t very steep and we are here to help you every step of the way. In this article, we’ll walk you through the entire process of building an Amazon affiliate site using WordPress. Whether you want to transform your WordPress blog into a money-making site or are completely new to the platform, this guide will provide you with all the information you need to get going. Let’s kick things off by considering what affiliate marketing is and its benefits!
What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Does the Amazon Associates Program Work?
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting a product from a third-party website and earning a profit from selling that product. In general, the affiliate partners with a bigger eCommerce business by marketing their products and directing traffic to the source website. As an Amazon affiliate, all you need to do is set up a website, add a couple of affiliate links, and then start earning some good bucks this way. If you already own a WordPress site that attracts some good traffic, then you shouldn’t miss out on affiliate marketing.
Each time a visitor follows an affiliate link from your site, Amazon pays you a certain percentage of what they buy over the next 24 hours. This percentage (or commission) depends on the product category and can be between the range of 0% (for alcoholic beverages) to 20% (for Amazon games).
The Benefits of Running an Amazon Affiliate Store
Still wondering whether running an Amazon affiliate store is worth a try? There are lots of ways to make some money online and almost every other eCommerce giant offers an affiliate program. Here are some of the key reasons why the Amazon Associates Program is a good bargain:
- Amazon is the most renowned and largest eCommerce option online. The mega-brand is well-known and trusted worldwide and you can find any type of product on the platform.
- It’s pretty easy to become an Amazon affiliate. You can just register online, start sharing affiliate links, and begin earning without hassle. We’ll take you through this process step by step.
- You can earn a lot through just one link. Your earnings are not limited to the products you link to on your site. You get a commission off every purchase the consumer makes within 24 hours.
- Amazon offers a secure and reliable system. The program is 100% safe for both the buyer and the affiliate. You’ll always get your real earnings. Their support is great as well.
We have to point out though that Amazon’s commissions can be quite low for some categories. But compared to other affiliate programs out there, their offer is pretty hard to turn down.
What You Need to Set Up an Affiliate Store on WordPress (How Much Does It Cost?)
Running an Amazon affiliate store requires the same resources as any other WordPress site. You can easily set up a typical blog and recommend products within your reviews, tutorials, and articles. Otherwise, you can build a full-fledged online store with WooCommerce and add your affiliate products to the store. Though the basic WordPress software is free and open-source, you’ll still need the following resources to get it running efficiently:
- Domain name: $9/year - $15/year. This depends on the domain extension you choose.
- WordPress hosting: $0.99/month (unmanaged) - $5.99/month (managed). Check out these recommendations for the best managed wordpress hosting providers.
- SSL certificate: Most major WordPress hosts include SSL certificates in their plans. This helps to secure your store from attacks and rank better on Google.
- WordPress theme: You can set up your site’s design with free WordPress themes like Astra. If you want more premium design features, the paid plans offer great value for money.
- WordPress eCommerce plugin: WooCommerce is the ideal option here. You get the powerful base software for free and you can add more features with a plethora of integrations with other plugins.
These resources listed above are the basics for running any professional WordPress website or store. Optimizing your store for conversion often requires more resources like SEO tools, analytics, and extra plugins but we won’t cover those here.
How to Create a WordPress Amazon Affiliate Website
Ready to build your Amazon affiliate site on WordPress? Let’s show you how to do this in 5 easy steps.
Step 1: Sign Up for the Amazon Associate Program
To get started, head over to the Amazon Associates homepage. Make sure you select the right country, then click Sign up.
You can either sign in to an existing Amazon account or create a new account. We’ll be creating a new account for this tutorial. To do this, click Create your Amazon account.
Next, follow through with the sign-up process. This requires you to fill the ‘Website and Mobile App List’ and ‘Profile’ tabs. These tabs basically ask for information about you and the platform powering your store.
Once you’re done, you can choose to fill in your payment and tax information later.
After this, Amazon will redirect you to your Amazon Affiliate dashboard.
This is where you get your affiliate product links when it’s time to add them to your store. We’ll show you how to do that later. Congratulations! Your Amazon Associates account is now ready for use. Let’s now build a WordPress website.
Step 2: Get Web Hosting and Set Up WordPress
Choosing the right web host for your WordPress site is very important. Your hosting servers are responsible for your site’s uptime, page performance, and other key factors. For the best value for money, we highly recommend Bluehost. If you choose two opt for Bluehost, head over to their WordPress hosting page. You can choose from the available shared hosting plans starting at $2.95/month.
Enter your existing domain name or create a new one on the next page. If you’re registering a new domain, Bluehost will first confirm whether it’s available. Next fill in the required account and payment information. You can also choose to add some extras like domain protection and Microsoft 365 Mailbox.
Once you’re done with payment, you can install WordPress with one click to gain access to your WordPress admin dashboard.
Hooray! You’ve successfully purchased a domain name, web hosting, and set up WordPress!Next, let’s add eCommerce capabilities to your website by installing WooCommerce.
Step 3: Install and Set Up WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the best eCommerce plugin you can use to power your WordPress store. This plugin helps you display products, accept payments, and perform other commercial transactions online.To install it, go to Plugins > Add New and type ‘WooCommerce’ in the search bar.
When you find the plugin, click Install Now then Activate.WooCommerce is a very powerful eCommerce tool that allows you to sell almost anything on WordPress. It adds a new tab to your WordPress dashboard and you can go to this tab to set up your store.
You can add products, set up shipping zones, shipping classes, and payment gateways. Since we’re building an Amazon affiliate store, we’ll be adding our affiliate products later on. Before then, let’s customize your store’s front-end design using a WooCommerce theme.
Step 4: Customize Your WooCommerce Store’s Appearance With Astra
One of the benefits of using WordPress is that you don’t have to build your site from scratch. WordPress themes allow you to use a predefined design template to get your site up in a few minutes. But not all WordPress themes have eCommerce functionalities. To sell your Amazon affiliate products, you’ll need a WooCommerce theme like Astra. This theme is specially customized and designed for eCommerce stores. To get it for free, go to Appearance > Themes > Add New and search for ‘Astra’. Then click Install followed by Activate.
Once you’ve activated the theme, go to Astra Options and click Install Importer Plugin.
Next, the Astra wizard will ask you to select your page builder. This allows the theme to give you a template that is optimized for your page builder. If you’ve not added any page builder to your site, select Gutenberg, the default option.
Now, you’ll see a list of multiple templates. Open the category dropdown and select eCommerce to see templates well-suited for your store.
You can choose any template of your choice. Preview the template in a new tab and click Import Complete Site if it matches your needs.
After completing the import, you can make changes to the default template design by navigating to Appearance > Customize.
At this point, your Amazon affiliate website is nearly ready. All you need to do now is add the affiliate products you like.
Step 5: Start Adding Amazon Affiliate Products to WooCommerce
To add your first affiliate product, log in to your Amazon Associates account, and search for any product you like. Type a keyword into the search bar and click Get link once you find the product.
Next, you can customize the link by changing elements like the background color and title color.
The default option you’ll see is to get a link to the product text and image. You can navigate to the Text Only and Image Only tab if you want. When you’re done, copy the HTML code and go back to your WordPress dashboard. You can then post this code on any page or location of your store. For example, you can create a dedicated page for your affiliate products and add the link.
Otherwise, you can get just the product link and add it directly to your WooCommerce store as an affiliate product. Click Text in the Amazon Associates SiteStripe bar at the top of the product page and copy the link.
Now, in your WordPress dashboard, go to Products > Add New and scroll down to the Product data section. Then select External/Affiliate product as the product type.
Paste the product link you copied in the Product URL field and add other necessary information.
Make sure you leave the price field blank. Amazon has a strict policy that can get your account banned if you copy the same details like descriptions and reviews from the Amazon store. When you’re done, you can preview or publish the product.
Voila! Your Amazon affiliate store is now in business!
Powerful Plugins to Promote Your New Amazon Affiliate Website
Having an Amazon Affiliate website is only part of the puzzle. Now you need to get the word out and market it.We know of a few powerful plugins that can help with that.
CartFlows
CartFlows is a powerful sales funnel builder designed to help make more profit from online stores. It comes with a suite of tools including a sales funnel builder, one-click upsell and order bump tools, abandoned cart tools, and a whole lot more.CartFlows features include:
- Drag and drop sales funnel builder
- Revenue boosting upsell and order bump tools
- Conversion templates you can import and use right away
- Dynamic offer features
- Cart abandonment tools to recover lost revenue
Schema Pro
Schema Pro helps any website score higher search engine rankings. The higher you place in search results, the higher the traffic you’ll get. Schema Pro makes it easy by ensuring all your products include the relevant schema.Key features of Schema Pro include:
- Simple point and click interface
- Support for the majority of popular schemas
- Compatibility with SEO plugins like Yoast
- Custom field mapping for more involved markup
- Automated tools to do most of the work for you
Spectra
As we walked you through building your Amazon Affiliate website with Gutenberg, we should recommend Spectra. This plugin expands the default blocks by adding 30 new ones. It also provides over 75 templates and some smart efficiency tools that can make it much easier to design new pages. Spectra includes:
- 30 new Gutenberg blocks
- 75 professionally-designed web templates
- Block style presets to customize everything
- Copy Paste function so you can re-use blocks throughout your site
- Optimized code so it’s lean and fast
Earning Big With Your First Amazon Affiliate Website
An Amazon affiliate store is a perfect platform for earning steady income online with minimal capital. With the power of WordPress, you can set up your site easily, even without any technical expertise. In this article, we explained why it makes sense to build your own Amazon affiliate store with WordPress. We hope this article answered all your questions about Amazon affiliate marketing with WordPress. Please share your feedback in the comments section below.
Comments / 0