The Amazon affiliate program is very popular among affiliates, and for good reason. There’s a huge range of products to promote, from books, to movies, electronics and much more. Just about every niche has a place in the Amazon marketplace, and affiliates can benefit by promoting products that are targeted to their website visitors.
If you’re thinking about joining the Amazon affiliate program, there are some pros and cons you should be aware of. This article will cover some of them.
Pros
I’ve already stated one of the biggest pros about selling Amazon products, but there are some others. Amazon has made some new changes to the affiliate dashboard and has made it very easy to get your affiliate links. Once logged in, simply go to the page of the product you want to promote, and there will be toolbar at the top. This toolbar provides everything you need to create your affiliate links.
Aside from this new addition, you can now promote any Amazon product via Twitter with just one click. I’m sure you’ve heard all of the great things about Twitter, so if you have an account with a decent amount of followers, promoting relevant products they might be interested in is super easy to do.
Cons
One of the cons of the Amazon affiliate program is the commission structure. If you chose the Performance payment plan, then your referral rates are as follows: you’ll earn only 4% for each referred sale up to 6 shipped items. If you refer 7 items up to 30 items, your referral rate increases up to 6%. The highest payout you can reach is 8.5%, and you need to have referred at least 3,131 items in order to reach this level.
This very well could be the biggest con there is with the Amazon program, but this shouldn’t deter you from promoting their products. Another con is that tracking cookies are only good for 24 hours. This means that if someone clicks on your affiliate link, and keeps the product page open but doesn’t buy for more than 24 hours, you wont get credited for the sale. This isn’t completely bad in itself, and affiliates should adjust their marketing efforts accordingly.
Overall, the Amazon affiliate program is a great way to add additional revenue from your website or blog.
