How to 10X your Amazon Affiliate Earnings in 2024: Build Direct Partnerships With Amazon Sellers

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective revenue sources influencers, creators, and bloggers alike can use to diversify their revenue streams.

Since The Creator Economy is booming and collaborating with influencers has become a popular strategy for Amazon marketers, there is the question everyone is dreading to ask; 

How can I scale my Amazon earnings and find new brands and partners to promote to build a profitable business? 

If you are looking for effective ways to earn more affiliate revenue from Amazon, partner directly with Amazon Sellers, negotiate higher and customized commissions with brands, and get insights on link and content strategies to take your earning to the next level, you have come to the right place. 

In this article, we will dive into strategies, tactics, and tools to help you maximize every click and get to get credit from referral sales within up to 14 days.

New to affiliate? We got you covered. Check out our comprehensive guide on how to start Affiliate Marketing and gain all the knowledge and tips to start on your affiliate journey the smart way. 

Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is by far one of the most popular networks and programs for Affiliates, Influencers, and content creators. If you are in the Home, Beauty, or Clothing space, there are a lot of opportunities to make revenue but it is a crowded space.

So how do Creators and Affiliates make a living as Amazon Associates and how they can scale? Let’s review.

What is Amazon Associates? 

Amazon Associates is an affiliate marketing program offered by Amazon. It allows individuals, bloggers, vloggers, website owners, and content creators to earn a commission by promoting and referring customers to Amazon products. Approved members in the program, known as Associates, can earn a percentage of the sales generated through their affiliate links.

While Amazon Associates is the general program, Amazon Influencer is a subset of the program and it is specifically designed for social media influencers who have a significant following and influence on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook. It offers a way for influencers to showcase and promote their favorite Amazon products to their audience through a dedicated storefront with unique tools and opportunities to promote brands on Amazon. This includes product custom collections and even livestream shopping features.

The main difference between Amazon Associates and Amazon Influencers is the target audience and the platform through which the promotion takes place. 

Note: Influencers can become Amazon Associates without signing up for the influencer program and utilize their own channels and blogs to monetize traffic.

Amazon Associates Commission rates

While Amazon keeps its promise of high conversions for sellers, vendors, and partners, it has been widely known that Amazon Associates Program terms are not the best when it comes to commission rates and attribution period. Commission rates vary depending on the product category, ranging from 0% for heavily-regulated markets and categories to up to 20% for Amazon Games.

Here is a recap’ of the current commission rates by category:

Checkout the Full Associates Program Standard Commission Income Statement per product category

While some product categories offer more generous commission rates, the program remains best suited for revenue-active bloggers, vloggers, content creators, and influencers with an established audience.

Amazon Associates Sales Attribution Window

Amazon Associates cookie allows tracking and attributes credit to the right affiliates for clicks and sales driven to the platform. You earn commission income on any qualifying items placed in a customer’s Shopping Cart within 24 hours of their arrival at Amazon.com via your Associate’s link. 

While this is a very short attribution window, there are some instances where this can be extended to usually 24 to up to 90 days depending on the program and product.

For example, if a customer lands on Amazon.com via your Associate’s link, adds an item to his Shopping Cart, and then leaves Amazon without placing an order. As long as the item was added to the customer’s Shopping Cart during this 24-hour window, you will still earn a referral commission if the order is placed before the Shopping Cart expires – usually after 90 days.

The good news is that direct partnerships with brands, enabled with tech platforms that utilize the Amazon Attribution API function, allow you to get up to 14-day attribution and bypass the 24-hour window.  

We will review all the details to get access to a longer attribution window and give a boost to your affiliate earnings in the next sections of this article. 

But before that, let’s review the ecosystem and “logistics” behind Amazon Associates’ program and the different parties involved.

Amazon Associates: Logistics and Ecosystem

The affiliate marketing ecosystem is a dynamic network of different players working together to facilitate and drive the success of any parties involved. In the Amazon Associates Network:

• The Sellers list their products on Amazon Storefront.
• The Amazon Associates and Influencers – approved to the Amazon Associates Program – create unique affiliate links to promote and syndicate the offers on their content via their preferred promotional methods. These can be via review/content sites, social media posts, reels, blogs, vlogs, etc.
• The Affiliates’ audience (aka potential customers) see the promoted links and clicks through to visit the Amazon product page listings and offers.
• The Amazon Associate Program will track link activity and sales through their cookies. Cookies are only active for 24 hours.
• The Amazon Associates will earn a commission and get paid 60 days after the end of the month the transaction occurred.

This is a “Win-Win-Win” relationship for all the actors in this affiliate ecosystem: 

• The brand aka Amazon seller will benefit from expanded brand reach and traffic exposure, organic ranking boosts of their listings, and higher sales.
• The affiliate “Amazon Associate” will earn commissions on referred sales.
• Amazon will earn more revenue and business from traffic funneling through the platform.

Many Sellers are now turning to building direct partnerships with content creators and social media influencers, using the power of Amazon Attribution API, more robust tracking tools, and effective content strategies and relationships with brands to increase their Amazon sales. 

We will take a deeper dive into the strategies and tactics in the next sections and will walk you through the details to help you 2X-5X-10X your existing commissions on sales that can only be up to a certain point when only leveraging the Amazon Associates Program. 

Strategies to Increase Amazon Affiliate Earnings

Category and Product Selection

If you are new to Affiliates or have been promoted Amazon offers for quite a while, you know that choosing the right product and category is essential. To be successful as an Amazon Associate, you need to focus on promoting products that are relevant to your target audience and have a higher likelihood of generating sales. Conduct thorough research to identify popular and trending products that align with your niche and audience’s interests.

Choosing to market in the least popular product categories among Amazon sellers is also a good strategy from a commission and competition perspective. It is a less crowded space with enough demand to drive interest and conversions and to negotiate higher commissions with sellers outside of the Amazon Associates program. We will get to that latter point in the next section.

Least popular product categories among Amazon Sellers

Though fewer sellers list products in these categories, they can still be profitable – usually above 20% margin. Therefore, Sellers in categories with lower competition but medium demand can afford to offer higher commissions to creators and Amazon Associates to monetize content and drive traffic to their Amazon Listings.

Create Engaging and Monetizable Content

BUILD MORE VALUE = DRIVE MORE SALES 

As content creators, marketers, or business owners, you know that content is king. 

So the first step is making sure to produce high-quality content that provides value to your audience. As an affiliate, there are very effective ways to focus on creating value and engage with your audience using specific types of content:  

• Product Comparison – Create comparison articles or videos that highlight the differences between similar products in the same category. Help your audience make an informed decision by showcasing features, price points, and benefits for each product. 
• Bestseller list – People love lists of all sorts, shapes, topics, and forms. Why? Because it is easily shareable, digestible, and memorable information that sticks longer in people’s minds. Compile a list of the top-selling products in a specific category, such as “Top 10 Bestselling Skincare Products.” highlight the unique selling points of each product, and explain why they are popular choices.
• Offer shopping guides – if you have not created any shopping guides in the past, you are missing out my friend. Shopping guides are high-engaging and converting types of content used by niche bloggers, influencers, and affiliates to successfully mediate sales between your audience and the brands. Create comprehensive shopping guides based on specific themes or occasions, such as “Holiday Gift Guide for Beauty Lovers” or “Back-to-School Essentials.”

• Dedicate posts to the best uses of a particular product. As an expert in your niche or an influencer with a large following base, your recommendations and tutorials matter to your audience; focus on a specific product and create content that showcases its best uses, features, and benefits. Use Reels, Videos, and Stories that are usually the best promotional channels to showcase.

If you are not part of the Amazon Influencer program – but are an approved Amazon Associate – you can use your own social media channels to promote your affiliate links in engaging Stories, Reels, and Posts. People love practical tips, ideas, or creative ways to incorporate the product into their daily routines or activities.

While Amazon Algorithm puts a lot of emphasis on how images impact rankings and performance, visually-appealing images will always be ideal for your audience and help trigger engagement and final buying decisions. Make these images clickable and direct them to the corresponding Amazon product pages using your affiliate links and ensure the images are clear, high-quality, and visually compelling to capture your audience’s attention.

As you adjust your content strategy and develop exciting content for your audience, take time to also optimize your affiliate links; strategically place your affiliate links within your content to maximize click-through rates. Experiment with different placements, such as within product descriptions, call-to-action buttons, or comparison tables. 

The more useful and trustworthy your content, the higher the chances of driving conversions.

Develop Direct Partnerships with Amazon Sellers

You got the basics covered but you are still struggling to scale your affiliate earnings promoting Amazon products. Sales are stagnant, commissions are capped, and attribution makes it difficult to keep up unless you relentlessly revisit and double up your promotional efforts. 

All of this ends up with an audience getting promo and sales ‘fatigue’ and quietly disengaging.

Not ideal..

But, what if you could 2X-5X-10X your affiliate earnings from promoting Amazon brands and products? Yes, that is now possible. 

If you followed through with all our previous recommendations, the ultimate way to scale your Amazon earnings is to develop direct relationships with brands (aka Amazon sellers).

And the best strategy to get started is to leverage tech partners that enable these direct partnerships and are set up with Amazon Attribution API capabilities.

What are the benefits? 

• Higher Commissions & EPC
• Longer Sales Attribution Windows 
• More Direct Brand Relationships
• Getting Paid Earlier

What if you could promote a brand that offers products that aligned with your audience and resonate with their needs? What if, that same brand is willing to offer more generous commission payouts than you currently earn from being an approved Amazon Associate?  

What if you could get attributed sales up to 14 days (instead of 24 hours)? 

That is possible by building direct partnerships with the right brand/Amazon sellers and with the right technology in place to support the partnership cycle. 

Also, while Amazon Associates Commission income is paid approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which it was earned, with direct partnerships facilitated through platforms like Levanta or Refersion, you can get paid commissions as early as 30 days after the end of the month in which it was earned. 

For example; content creators and influencers in the Health and Supplement space could take their Affiliate earnings to the next level by building direct partnerships with Supplements brands/Amazon sellers, while still yielding the benefits of earning Amazon Associates commission but here is an example of the real benefits.

On an average of $5,000 in monthly sales driven by promoting top supplements brands selling on Amazon, commissions are capped at 1% so you earn $50 in affiliate commissions without any other direct partnerships in place. 

By leveraging the right technology (at no cost to you) and by building more direct relationships with similar brands in that space, you can get approved in a program from brands willing to pay 15% in commission instead. 

Doing the math, on the same $5,000 in monthly affiliate sales, we are now looking at $750 in affiliate earnings. 15X more earnings than when only working through the Amazon Associates program.

But wait… What if it gets even better, and with the right technology, you can use your Amazon Associate links in tandem with tags provided by the affiliate platform to tag your link with commission negotiated with brands? 

On the same $5,000 in monthly affiliate sales, you get not $50, not $750 but $800 in affiliate earnings. 

Imagine the power of scale when working with direct partnerships with brands willing to pay up to 50% commission on qualified sales for some categories.

Scaling with the right direct partnerships is key. Many brands are willing to offer more generous commissions when working directly with Amazon Associates. 

This is a ‘win-win-win’ scenario; 

• Amazon gets traffic and even offers sellers referral credit fees for driving non-Amazon traffic to the platform.
• Brands and sellers are getting more visibility on sales attribution from affiliates and partners and can fund creators and influencers with more generous commissions as a portion of this cost can be offset by the 10% credit from the Amazon Brand Referral program.
• Creators, influencers, and affiliate marketers can reap all the benefits of getting rewarded with more commissions, scaling their affiliate earnings, getting paid earlier, and building a sustainable reputation in the space. 

Taking advantage of the new affiliate technologies rolling out in the Partnership Economy and building more direct relationships is one of the most -if not- the most profitable ways to take your online business to the next step. 

If you are already working with Affiliate Networks such as Rakuten, Awin, Impact Radius, or ShareaSale, most of these platforms have discovery and marketplace tools for publishers and affiliates to find new products and brands to promote. 

New Amazon-friendly tech platforms offer similar solutions targeting Amazon Brands and Products instead and offer powerful tools to quickly find products you’re looking for, searching by ASIN, Brand, Keyword, Product Category, or Product Name.

You can discover feature products or best sellers in your niche and category and shop for affiliate offers that align with your audience’s interests and needs. 

Best Affiliate Platform for Amazon Associates

At this time, there are only a handful of solutions and Affiliate Software that can enable direct partnerships between creators, ambassadors, content creators, publishers, and Amazon Sellers, 

We recommend checking out Levanta, a partner marketing platform that supports Amazon’s Attribution API and allows sellers and publishers to build direct partnerships. The platform offers more visibility in Amazon revenue attributed to Amazon Associates. Their link-tagging feature is fully compatible with Amazon Associate Links which allows affiliates, joining this network, to increase affiliate earnings and commission opportunities with top Amazon Sellers.

Levanta

1. Discover brands and products
2. Sign up with your basic details
3. Levanta provides a tag to add to your Amazon Associate link
4. Add the tags to your links and start earning commissions
5. Receive an automated monthly payment from Levanta

Amazon Associates FAQ

How much can I make as an Amazon Associate? 

This may vary whether you are an Amazon associate only or work directly with the brand to scale your Amazon earnings. Amazon Associates make an average of $58,000 annually, Top Amazon Associates can earn $100,000 + per year. With additional direct partnerships with Amazon sellers, you can boost your affiliate earnings by 3-5 times the average salary as Amazon Associate.

Who pays Amazon Affiliate Fees? 

Amazon pays its approved Associates fees for referred sales. With the new affiliate platform tracking capability powered by Amazon Attribution API, a few Affiliate software can now facilitate commission payouts between the Amazon Affiliates and the Seller aka brand. In this case, the seller pays fees and commissions via this more direct partnership type.

How long does it take to get approved for Amazon Associates

The approval process is quite quick. It usually takes 24 to 72 hours for Amazon to provide you with a status on your Amazon Associates application. Whether you are approved or not. 

Wrapping Up

If you are serious about building a profitable affiliate business creating content that engages and converts and scaling your affiliate earnings with Amazon, you have now all you need to start optimizing and adjusting your content creator strategy. 

Maximizing your Amazon affiliate revenue and developing direct partnerships with brands is key; by implementing effective content strategies and by leveraging the right tech solutions you can not only access more brand deals and opportunities but also increase your affiliate earnings potential while establishing long-lasting collaborations with brands.

We reviewed the importance of understanding the Amazon Associates program and its commission structure, emphasizing the need to choose the right products to promote. Thorough research and analysis are essential in identifying popular niches, trending products, and high-demand categories that resonate with your target audience. 

Furthermore, we outlined a strategy with recommendations on how to create quality content that engages and educates your readers, such as compelling product reviews, informative articles, and engaging tutorials.

And that was just the best practice- standard in the ‘Affiliate for Amazon’ space. The real strategy lies in building direct partnerships with brands and sellers to open up new avenues for success. Through tech solutions offering to better attribute Amazon affiliate sales and performance, and by reaching out to sellers who align with your niche and target audience, you will rapidly -and profitably- scale your business in no time.

It is still crucial to continuously analyze performance, track conversions, and optimize your partnership strategy in alignment with the new trends in the market. Regular communication with brands and sellers, along with providing detailed reports, ensures transparency and strengthens the partnership. 

With a strategic approach, a commitment to quality, and a focus on building strong partnerships, you can unlock the full potential of the Amazon Associates program, increase your affiliate earnings, and establish fruitful collaborations with brands and sellers at no additional cost to you. 

Do you want to learn more about scaling your Amazon Associates earnings or need help taking the next steps? Contact us to discuss your business strategy in more detail. 

Success starts with The Good Strategy!