Amazon Associates is one of the easiest options to pursue to monetize your blog. You simply sign up at the Amazon Associates website, choose which method you want to use to add Amazon products to your blog, and you’re ready to go.

Amazon.com’s associate program (For Amazon “associate program” is their word for “affiliate program”) is a free opportunity where you can make money by helping sell these products from your web site. For books, using the “classic” (more on this in a moment) referral fee structure you earn 15% commission for books you help sell as a result of direct links from your site, and 5% commission for books that the customer buys by surfing around at Amazon after following your link. Commission rates for other products may vary.

With Amazon Associates’ affliiate advertising program, you can choose from thousands and thousands of products to advertise on your blog. From books to diapers and everything inbetween, you can find it on Amazon.

Amazon Associates members can track the performance of the ads on their blogs down to the specific ad widget. This will help you identify which types of ads and products generate the highest revenue and which are underperforming. That way, you can make the necessary changes to optimize the revenue potential from you Amazon program.

Provide customers the convenience of referring them to a trusted site where they can immediately purchase the products you advertise on your site. And when they do, you can earn up to 15% in referral fees.

On the negative side, Amazon.com’s associate program does have a number of drawbacks when compared to some other affiliate programs:

• Commissions are paid quarterly (many other affiliate programs pay monthly).
• Amazon does not use cookies to give you credits for sales from customers return visits or bookmarks to Amazon – you only earn commission if the customer buys in the same browser session. While, I find this understandable given Amazon’s other online and offline marketing efforts, no doubt some affiliates would surely feel that they ought to get commission of more sales.
• There are links on Amazon’s web site (for example, Internet search and so on), which you do not each commission on. Again, some affiliates may find it annoying that they send visitors to Amazon, and those visitors can be offered options which don’t generate the affiliate a commission.

However, with a bit of effort, I think that many webmasters should be able to earn steady commissions, which form a nice additional stream of income from their web sites.

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