{"id":26539,"date":"2013-04-24T02:55:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T15:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/problogger.com\/?p=26539"},"modified":"2021-07-30T14:04:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T04:04:28","slug":"the-ultimate-guide-to-making-money-with-the-amazon-affiliate-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/problogger.com\/the-ultimate-guide-to-making-money-with-the-amazon-affiliate-program\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I was looking back over some of my earliest attempts at making money from blogging<\/a>. I realised that this month marks 10 years of me using Amazon’s Associates Program<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

How I Started Making Money with Amazon’s Affiliate Program<\/h2>\n

I first heard about Amazon\u2019s Affiliate program in April 2003. I had been blogging for 6 months and was beginning to realise that this new hobby of mine was going to cost me a little money (for hosting, design etc).<\/p>\n

I was newly married at the time and on a very tight budget. I realised that if I wanted to keep blogging, I needed to find a way for my blogs to pay for themselves. So began my hunt for ways to do just that.<\/p>\n

I began to experiment with two methods of making money from my blogs \u2013 Google\u2019s AdSense program<\/a><\/strong> and Amazon\u2019s Affiliate program<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Of the two, AdSense has certainly earned significantly more money \u2013 however, Amazon\u2019s Affiliate program has also been an important income stream.<\/p>\n

$660,000 later…<\/h2>\n

I\u2019d love to be able to calculate exactly how much I\u2019ve earned from Amazon in that time but their current reporting system only goes back as far as 2008.<\/p>\n

However \u2013 in 2012 (after doing some reconstructing of my earnings) I put together the following chart of my earnings to that point (the years 2003-2007 are based upon earnings numbers mentioned in previous posts here on ProBlogger but are not exact).<\/p>\n

\"Amazon<\/p>\n

Since 2012 I have placed less emphasis on Amazon so things have dropped off a little but I\u2019m still tracking in the range of $50,000 to $60,000 per year from Amazon and overall I estimate my Amazon earnings, since 2003, are around the $660,000 mark (USD). Note: this figure was updated in September 2017.<\/p>\n

So while it\u2019s nowhere near my #1 income stream Amazon\u2019s Affiliate program has certainly been important to me.<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>: I share my other income streams (there are 12) and how I added them one by one in this post<\/a> and in this follow-up post<\/a> I share more detail of a breakdown of how the income streams rank.<\/p>\n

I share these results not because I\u2019m the biggest Amazon Affiliate going around. I have no doubt I\u2019m in the middle of the pack and that there are a lot bigger than me*. I share these results because, over the years, I\u2019ve heard many bloggers write off the Amazon Affiliate program as not being worth the time.<\/p>\n

*I make this assumption based upon the fact that I’ve never ever been contacted by Amazon directly and I know a few other affiliates who have regular contact with Amazon and who’ve been assigned account managers over the years because they do so well from the program.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why Many People Don’t Use the Amazon Affiliate Program (and Why I DO)<\/h2>\n

The usual reasons I hear people giving for not being an Amazon affiliate include:<\/p>\n