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The Amazon Associates is a very good affiliate network suitable to almost everyone. From shoes to hard drives, from books to musical instruments – Amazon has it all, which is why anyone with a blog or site that has enough readers can make money with them.

The commissions vary on different products, but are generally acceptable and not much lower than what other affiliate networks have to offer. Not to mention there are a lot of products for which there are no other advertisers.

It’s easy to get started: just register, pick a few of the various advertising methods, implement them and wait. That’s the basic version. If you want to go advanced and make some serious money, you have to start learning how to increase the traffic, improve the click through rate and conversion of your site.

Here are 5 basic tips that will help you get on the right track with making money from Amazon Associates affiliate program:

1.       Pick a good topic. This point is valid only if you are starting a new blog (you can’t change the topic of an already established site without hurting your popularity, reputation and rankings). You need to do a little research and pick a moderately popular niche (so you won’t have too many competitors) for which there are enough products with good commissions on Amazon for you to experiment with. For example, a blog about making money online will never convert as well for Amazon as a blog about books or printers.

2.       Implement early. Don’t wait until your blog is popular enough – start inserting links and experimenting with banners from the first post. This way you’ll already have advertising in place for when your articles get to the top of search engines or on Digg and similar social networks. And most importantly, you will learn what works and converts well on your site and how to improve it.

3.       Pick quality products. Obviously, you’ve got to pick the best products for your readers. And I don’t mean from the whole niche and for your site, but for separate posts, too. If you insert links to the best cheap laser printer on a post titled “Best cheap laser printers of 2009” and links to the best printers for an office on “The best printers for your office”, you will get a much higher conversion rate than if you just inserted random links to printers on Amazon in all your articles. This is a part of what they call “laser targeting”, which, as you can see, does not apply only to paid search.

4.       Don’t overhype. Hyping up a product, whether it’s good or bad, is never a good choice, because if and when the reader orders it based on your recommendation or link and sees that it is not what you said it will be, he will lose faith in you. That’s the worst thing that can happen. You’ve got to always consider the interests of the reader first, and if you review something, say it as it is, don’t try to make it seem better. Besides, that’s what point 3 is all about, you’ll never need to overhype a good product.

5.       Be transparent with your readers. I’m talking about disclosing the fact that all your links are affiliate links (and they should be). Most people are afraid that their readers will be angry at the fact that the author is making money on them. But that’s not true, because a) your links do not affect the price a customer pays in any way and b) If your content is good and you are giving out truthful and useful information and tips, you are providing value to your readers, and most of them will be happy that they helped you somehow in return. Of course, there will be the occasional “I’m not going to buy through your link…” people, but they’re the exception and should not bother you much. Just say “OK, you’re free to choose” and forget about it.

These tips would actually apply to most affiliate networks, so don’t limit your implementation just to Amazon Associates. Good luck!

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