The Amazon Associates affiliate program is an easy way to diversify your blog's income. By recommending your favorite, tested products to your readers, you can earn a commission on any of their Amazon purchases. Pretty neat!

However, affiliate marketing takes a bit of planning and finesse, and giving it the attention it deserves can really pay off – literally! In this article, we'll answer some common questions about the Amazon Associates affiliate program and talk about things you can do to increase your affiliate earnings.

For an in-depth look at what affiliate marketing entails, read through our guide to affiliate marketing.

What is the Amazon Associates affiliate commission?

The fee rates vary depending on the product category. You can earn as much as 10% on women’s fashion and luxury beauty items, 8% on home and pantry goods, and 5% on grocery purchases. (See current program fee rates here.)

Does the Amazon Associates affiliate commission only apply to the specific products I recommended?

When a site visitor clicks on an Amazon affiliate link on your blog, you earn a commission on anything the visitor purchases after clicking.

Imagine you’ve added an affiliate link to your favorite curry powder on Amazon. Your site visitor clicks through to check out the product. Perhaps she drops it in her cart. Maybe, as many of us do, she thinks about something else she intended to order from Amazon (maybe a $150 Instant Pot or a $450 KitchenAid Stand Mixer), so she adds that to her cart also. You get a commission on the whole shebang!

When your site visitors click an Amazon affiliate link, a cookie (a small piece of tracking data) is added to their browser and remains active for 24 hours. You’ll earn affiliate fees on any qualifying items your visitor adds to their shopping cart during that time: the curry powder, the Instant Pot, and the KitchenAid mixer. (Let’s dream big, bloggers!)

The 24-hour window immediately closes when the customer submits her order or when she re-enters Amazon through another Associate’s link.

If the customer adds a qualifying item to her Shopping Cart but doesn’t place an order, you can still earn a referral fee if the customer completes the order before her Shopping Cart expires, around 90 days.

Can I increase the Amazon affiliate commission?

While you’ve got no control over the rates themselves, you can make more money by increasing the number of visitors you send to Amazon and doing a good job of selling the products before they even click over.

Tips to increase affiliate earnings from the Amazon Associates program

Try these tips to boost your Amazon affiliate earnings.

1. Use in-content links

The more affiliate links you have on your site, the more chances there are for readers to click them and earn money for you.

Links don’t have to be obvious or visual. They can be simple in-content links as you reference your favorite products and brands.

Our Tasty Links plugin for WordPress sites makes this really easy. Simply add a keyword and product URL in your WordPress dashboard and click Publish.

Make sure to add the correct value to your rel attribute so Google knows exactly what kind of link it is as well! We've got more information on that in our blog post below.

Read more from the WP Tasty blog

Any instances of that keyword on your website will now be automagically ✨ linked to your Amazon affiliate product of choice, taking the work out of adding affiliate links to your old (and new!) content.

2. Compare similar products

Readers love to know what their options are and why your recommendation is the best one. Help them out by creating comparison charts for top products that you use and recommend on your blog.

For example, Serious Eats compared several brands of electric pressure cookers with affiliate links back to all of the competing products. People reading the article are probably in the market for the product, and you’ve done the research for them. Therefore, they’re more likely to click on one of the links. If they purchase any item after clicking on one of your links, you get the commission for the sale.

Serious Eats pressure cooker comparison

3. Write a bestseller list

Similar to a comparison chart, a bestseller list is an opportunity to provide readers with several affiliate links to click through.

You could create a list of best-selling items in a similar category, such as best-selling pressure cookers, or you might create a more general list, like best-selling kitchen must-haves. Since readers interested in the list are actively researching a particular product, they’re more likely to make a purchase.

Use fun holidays and special events to create unique curated lists for visitors, like this article “6 Kitchen Gadgets That Every Pasta-Lover Needs” in celebration of National Pasta Day.

4. Offer shopping guides

Holidays, changing seasons, and birthdays are great excuses to offer readers shopping guides.

Whether it’s a Christmas gift guide for foodies, a list of summer essentials to help readers get the most out of their grills, or birthday gifts for hardworking men, a shopping guide provides ample opportunity to share affiliate links. Since people are in a shopping frame of mind, affiliate links in shopping guides may be more effective than other in-content links.

5. Dedicate posts to best uses of a particular product

Pinch of Yum has done an excellent job of showcasing products in a way that feels natural, helpful, and engaging. Lindsay uses posts like “16 Magical Ways to Use Your Instant Pot” to share affiliate links while sharing actionable tips.

"16 magical ways to use your instant pot" graphic form the pinch of Yum website showing 8 different examples

After seeing how useful a certain tool or product can be, people are more likely to check it out on Amazon (and maybe even purchase). And remember – your affiliate cookie works for any product on Amazon, so even if they don’t purchase the product they clicked on, you can still earn a commission on other goods they purchase during that time. Just getting clicks is worth it!

Simply seeing a product is enough to pique the curiosity of many site visitors.

If you’ve got an image of a product that earns you affiliate fees, link it to the product page on Amazon. This makes profitable use of a link that might otherwise go nowhere. If you look back at Pinch Of Yum’s post, you’ll notice that Lindsay uses her photograph of the Instant Pot as another opportunity to link to the product’s Amazon page.

That being said, Tasty Links also makes it super easy for you to add Amazon product images to your links! Be sure to check out our blog post on that.

Read more from the WP Tasty blog

Best Practices for Using Amazon Images on Your Blog

7. Develop an effective keyword strategy

As with all content, your Amazon affiliate links will be more successful if they’re in tune with the thinking of your audience. Use long tail keyword phrases that reflect the common questions and queries of the demographic you serve.

Comparison charts, bestseller lists, and shopping guides are all useful for implementing a keyword strategy as they provide natural context for commonly searched phrases like “Instant Pot versus Cuisinart CPC-600 6 Quart 1000 Watt Electric Pressure Cooker”, “best night creams for dry skin”, or “best gifts for handy men”.

What about you? How do you make money as an Amazon affiliate? Share your favorite Amazon affiliate tip in the comments.