How To Monetize A Podcast With Amazon Affiliate Marketing – EP 22

November 17, 2022

How To Monetize a Podcast with Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing with Amazon is a great way to make money with your podcast. Full disclosure, I’m an Amazon Associate, and I make money every month by promoting products in my show notes, blog posts, social media channels, and in my YouTube video descriptions. Believe me, If I can do it, YOU can do it.

In This Episode You Will Learn The Following

How to make money from your podcast through affiliate marketing with Amazon
Where to get started with the Amazon Associates program
The Amazon Influencer Program – How to create an Amazon online store and get paid to promote products you love

Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

If you didn’t know, Affiliate Marketing is selling other peoples products. You get a commission if someone makes a purchase from you. Amazon’s program for this is called Amazon Associates. Of course, it’s wildly popular amongst podcasters.

How It Works With Amazon

You sign up for the program and share links to products related to your podcast. Amazon will provide you with a unique link that can be traced back to you. Fortunately, you can link to just about any product on Amazon. If someone purchases something through your link, you get a commission.

Where To Share Your Amazon Affiliate Links

Your podcast show notes, YouTube descriptions, blog posts, and social media accounts are all great places to promote products and share links. To make the most money, your goal should be to drive as much traffic as you can to Amazon, via your links.

The key is to only promote products that you’re passionate about, that you use, or that are relevant to your niche. This way, you’re providing value to your listeners, thus, you’re more likely to make sales. If you start recommending random products just to try and make money, you’ll lose credibility. I’ve found that the best way to get started is to share links with your friends and family. Ideally, they’ll make a purchase from you.

Sign Up To Become an Amazon Associate

Go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home

On that page you can read through the qualifications and learn about the program in more detail.

The Qualifications

To get approved for the program you need to be a content creator of some form. Amazon doesn’t say what the EXACT qualifications are, but, it’s my understanding that you need to be putting out content. As a podcaster, you shouldn’t have a problem getting approved. Thankfully, you don’t need to have a massive following to be accepted. You just need to have SOME sort of audience and be creating consistently.

To make the cut, you also need to make 3 sales in your first 6 months in the program. If you don’t, you’ll get dropped. This actually happened to me the first time I signed up a couple years ago. The idea of making money online sounded great, but I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t putting out content and didn’t have an online ecosystem to call my own. About a year ago I signed back up and made those first 3 sales rather quickly. Then I proceeded to make a little bit of money each month.

Now, I’m hitting Amazon’s affiliate program harder than ever. As of writing this, I doubled my sales from last month to this month, and we’re only half way through this month! Honestly, it’s not a ton of money, but it’s allowed me to see what’s possible, and has motivated me to keep pushing harder.

Amazons Commission Structure

The Amazon commission structure ranges from 20% per sale, to 1% per sale. Each category of products pays a different commission. Here are the commission rates for each category.

Amazon Influencer Program

https://www.amazon.com/shop/info

Once you’ve gained momentum as an Amazon Associate you may want to sign up for the Influencer Program. Within the Influencer Program, you can create an Amazon store and sell products online.

Amazon Influencer Store Features

Promotional videos
Shopping lists
The ability to go live on Amazon and sell products
Functions like a social media site

The Wrap Up

Don’t wait, now is a great time to monetize your podcast. Don’t stall until your downloads are through the roof. Start recommending products that you use and that can solve your audiences problems, today!

It’s really easy to sign up for these programs and after a few months you’ll build some momentum, which will in turn build your confidence and also put some cash in your pocket.