So you’re looking to build your affiliate marketing empire?
You’ve seen all these other people talk about how they’ve replaced their full-time income through this affiliate thing — and now you want your piece of the pie.
So becoming an Amazon affiliate must a great idea, right?
You can take advantage of this hugely trusted marketplace that converts like crazy. And there’s a ton of products to promote so you’re bound to find something with relatively low competition that you can build a site around…
Except, it’s not a great idea at all.
In fact, the Amazon Associates affiliate program is one of the worst ways to build a stable, long-term income through affiliate marketing!
And in this post, I’ll outline why you should avoid becoming an Amazon affiliate and focus your efforts on promoting products that are WAY more lucrative.
Go go go!
1. Low commissions on products
Let’s kick things off with the elephant in the room — the Amazon Associates commission structure leaves a lot to be desired.
And to add insult to injury, on March the 1st this year, they announced a change to their affiliate payout structure.
Previously, the Amazon associates program worked on a variable fee model. This meant Amazon affiliates were paid higher commissions for selling more of the same product. The scale ranged from 4.5% to 8%.
But now they’ve changed this to a flat-rate system based on categories and reduced the affiliate payout to zero for some product types.
Amazon claims to have made this change to “simplify the system” but judging by the feedback from Amazon business owners, the majority have suffered a significant drop in revenue since the change.
Here’s what the current commission structure looks like:
This is pretty awful.
For anyone looking to make serious money, the changes render some categories obsolete for affiliate promotion.
Aside from these changes, most physical products, in general, have low affiliate commissions due to the high number of overhead costs.
So promoting physical goods from an affiliate perspective isn’t the best idea.
2. Lack of information products
If you already know a thing or two about affiliate marketing, you’ll know information products (think digital downloads, training courses and software services) are where you can make real money.
Why?
Because some of these products pay insane commissions for making a referral. It’s not uncommon to find info products that offer 70% commissions on a sale.
This is a game changer for anyone looking to build a serious side income or even replace full-time work wages.
Unfortunately, Amazon Associates doesn’t have much in the way of information products and the software products they do have are banned for affiliate promotion!
What separates the winners from the losers in affiliate marketing
Becoming an Amazon affiliate also means you’re missing out on high paying affiliate programs.
These programs offer products that are priced much higher than the average stuff you’d be promoting as an affiliate.
So instead of busting your balls getting 5 million people to buy a crappy $20 e-book, you sell a $4000 training course and make 50% commissions.
This way, you’ll only need to refer a very small number of people to make a solid income.
One such example that I’ve previously promoted is an e-commerce training called Amazing Selling Machine.
This is a comprehensive course that teaches people how to start their own e-commerce business from scratch. The course retails for $4000 and the commissions are 50%.
Do you see how powerful this is?
By making just one sale, you can make $2000 dollars in commissions. At five sales a month, you’re making more than most people earn in their day jobs.
This is life-changing stuff.
3. No recurring income
Did you know there are hundreds of software tools out there that pay lifetime recurring commissions for referrals?
That’s right. You refer someone once to a product and you get paid every single month for the lifetime of that person’s subscription.
These products are only becoming more popular as more businesses move towards a subscription-based pricing model.
An example of this is Clickfunnels.
Clickfunnels is a platform that helps companies build high-converting landing pages, membership sites and manage email marketing:
Their pricing starts at $97 and goes up to $297 per month for their Etison Suite package.
As an affiliate, you can promote Clickfunnels and earn 40% lifetime commissions for every person that signs up through your link.
That’s up to $118.80 per month for a single referral.
Get 100 people to sign up through you and you could be doing over $10,000 a month.
That’s enough money for you to quit your day job!
The beauty of recurring income is you only need to put in the work once. After you’ve done the initial work, those commissions keep coming in.
Unfortunately, Amazon Associates doesn’t offer any product with a recurring commission structure.
Related Content: If you’re looking to use landing page tools for your business, check out this review between two top platforms — Leadpages vs Clickfunnels.
4. Extremely short cookie duration
Affiliate cookies determine the duration of time that a sale is attributed to you after someone clicks on your special link.
Most affiliate programs have 30, 60 or even 365-day cookies.
But the Amazon Associates cookie is only valid for 24 hours.
So if someone clicks on your Amazon affiliate link and buys the product 2 days later, you won’t make any commissions.
This gives you a really small window to make that sale and this becomes quite problematic for promoting some of the higher priced products like DSLR cameras.
5. Overly strict terms of service
Amazon associates are notorious for banning affiliate accounts that have supposedly broken a rule in their TOS.
They have an extensive list of terms that you must adhere to as an affiliate — some of which are just way over the top.
Case in point:
If you don’t make a sale within 90 days of opening your Amazon affiliate account, they shut it down…
Also, you can’t do any of these things:
- Promote Amazon products by email.
- Add Amazon affiliate links to e-books and PDF’s.
- Mention the price of products on your website.
I could go on but this gives you a rough idea of the meticulous nature of their terms of service.
Many Amazon affiliates have spent years creating profitable businesses, only for them to be slapped with a permanent ban.
Worse still, Amazon is super vague about the reasons for banning your account, so it can be extremely difficult to know what caused the violation.
6. Lack of exclusive offers
Another downside to promoting products on the Amazon Associates program is the lack of exclusive offers.
Amazon sells products that can be found in various places on the internet and in retail stores globally. This means they’re competing heavily on price, which in turn means your commissions will be lower.
Also, you can’t offer exclusive deals.
For other affiliate programs, you’ll have special offers that you can give to your readers.
For example:
As a Convertkit affiliate, I can offer a special deal for anyone looking to sign up for the platform. And although other affiliates will have similar offers, it’s nice to be able to offer semi-exclusive deals to your customers.
Also in some cases, you can come up with totally exclusive deals by working directly with a company. These partnerships usually come about from being one of the top affiliates for a given product/service.
Related Content: How to Start a Blog From Scratch: The Ultimate Guide
Discovering a superior alternative
The superior alternative to becoming an Amazon affiliate is to promote information products.
And don’t waste your precious time on any old junk (don’t even think about using Clickbank). You could easily struggle just as much by selling low-priced e-books that no one really wants to buy.
The foundations of a successful affiliate business is finding the right products to promote.
In other words:
You can’t polish a turd.
You must find high-quality affiliate programs and combine this with sound marketing knowledge.
Affiliate marketing isn’t easy. Far from it. It requires learning and mastering a lot of new skills.
But the rewards can be incredible. Earning passive income. The ability to travel the world, be location independent and live life on your own terms are just some of the things that are possible for you.
Bringing it all together
So now you know the truth about the Amazon associates program. It’s really not the best way to get started in affiliate marketing. To make matters worse — as of April 2020, Amazon has slashed their affiliate commissions across a broad range of categories.
Some categories have dropped to as little as 1% per sale.
That said, plenty of people have created profitable businesses promoting products as an Amazon affiliate.
But why go through all that struggle and risk when you can earn so much more promoting high-ticket affiliate products instead?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
I’m a London-born lover of technology, obsessed with online business, passive income and the digital economy. I love learning, researching and curating the most valuable resources to save you time, money and help you discover the truth on what it actually takes to achieve your goals.
Hi Ahmad
I read blogs of you 17 little known affiliate programs , Can you explain one thing to me how a newbie can join this programs , The companies ask plenty of questions before joining . I don,t have a experience yet i am also a newbie or beginner in this field so what should i do to clear all those questions and get approved with mid to high level affiliate programs . I hope you Read this mail & clear this things to me in simple words .
Thanks & Regards
Hardeep Singh
If you promote the right products, then you can make money trough affiliate marketing.
Your post is very informative. Amazon sends you mail stating that they did not approve your account for an affiliate program, you can make the necessary changes and send a mail to them requesting to reinstate your account.
Not many people know that you can get your old amazon affiliate account back, rather than applying for a new one. This way you save your commision from your old account.
Thanks for reading.
They disabled my account within 3 months due to no sales.
Thanks for your good website and information !
Wow, I must say a very informative article, I’ll definitely save the link for further referral, it sure very informative and useful for my online business. Thank you.
Your blog is very informative.i want to start a affiliated business can you suggest how I will proceed and shoes products I will try to sale.
Thank you. I’m not that familiar with affiliate marketing but came to that belief before I got invested with them.
I’m looking to doing a blog and endorse programs, products that I believe in.
Your information is very useful and I will do further review my non impressive attempt to have success with their affiliate program.
Hello Ahmed,
hope you are doing well.
I love the way you put the story forward. 3 years back I gave a shot to amazon associates and in the process to make some good revenue I was phased with quite a number of challenges in terms of policies, advertisements, and scalability of my campaign. It gave me a good perspective that why I should try a different avenue to create a passive income source.
Thanks for this informative article bro.
Amazons affiliate program is harsh they ban you and do not even tell you why I had been approved and banned before Id even opened the approved Email and their Emails didn’t provide any information as to why one had an empty area where the reason link was to be the other a link that didn’t work they tell you asking to have it reexamined is pointless and they wont even reply to any further requests all that in a couple Emails the ban is lifetime their rules change a lot and often so you really have to keep up… Read more »