Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing Review For 2025

Amazon Associates offers a single comprehensive product for monetization.

Industry Categories

Amazon’s affiliate marketing platform operates in a variety of categories, but mainly in consumer goods and products. Their various platforms includes anything from apparel to electronics and beauty products.

“Recommend” with custom link-building tools

The simple driver of the Amazon affiliate marketing system is recommendations. Associates simply use customized links to share products on Amazon. Purchases made through the links you build are tracked and paid for via commissions.

Amazon offers customized linking tools for different kinds of partners. A blog publisher, for example, will use a different tool than a social media influencer. Amazon guides associates through this process, making it easy to recommend products.

After the link building is established, you start making commissions on actions. You can create links on blog content with embedded hyperlinks. You can also place the links in social media posts, video elements, and more.

Associates can make money through commissions for several possible conversion actions:

• Purchases
• Email list additions
• Free trials

Niche Rates

Amazon offers commissions that vary by niche. For some niches, they offer highly competitive rates. Their rates in some categories used to be higher, but they still offer impressive associate payouts.

Using affiliate marketing programs can be especially profitable under certain circumstances. Amazon’s affiliate network is especially profitable for selling furniture, for example. Furniture prices are usually higher than other consumer products and Amazon pays a very competitive commission for their sales.

Similarly, many home and music products offer high commission rates per sale. However, there are also many lower-priced items that the right content creator could earn a lot from with a large enough following.

The only issue here is that Amazon tends to change its commission often. Often, the changes aren’t small.

Always check with Amazon Associates for up-to-date commission rates.

Amazon Bounty Program

The Amazon Bounty Program can act as an extension to Amazon Associates. The Bounty Program offers fixed incomes from your advertising. You can use it and Amazon’s affiliate marketing service simultaneously.

The Amazon Bounty Program is a bit different from Amazon Associates. The premiums they pay you for advertising are not for promoting products. Instead, they pay you to promote Amazon services, especially Amazon Prime. The services they pay you to promote are:

• Amazon Music Unlimited
• Amazon Prime Video
• Audible
• Amazon Kids +
• Kindle Unlimited
• Prime Video Channels
• Amazon Wedding List
• Prime Student
• Prime Try Before You Buy
• Amazon Baby Wishlist

The basic requirement for using the Amazon Bounty Program is that your content is relevant to the Amazon services you advertise. For example, music YouTube channels are well-suited for Amazon Music Unlimited. This requirement is also practical for you; you’ll earn far more when advertising Amazon services that are more relevant to your audience.

As with product-based Amazon Associates, you are paid a fixed commission. Every referral signing up for an Amazon subscription is a “bounty” you collect.

The Bounty Program is just as easy to use, also. You use the same simple link-building process.

SiteStripe

SiteStripe is the feature that enables you to create links without visiting Amazon’s central hub (Associates Central).

This diverse tool assists you in building links to any page on Amazon and sharing them. It integrates with Facebook and X (Twitter). SiteStripe makes the process easy by providing the entire infrastructure you need and shortcuts to Amazon pages.

When you create a link, the Associate ID and Tracking ID are incorporated into the short link. You can quickly and easily guarantee yourself a commission on any conversions you produce with each link, which is tailored to the type of destination page.

Earnings Summary

SiteStripe is connected with the built-in reporting feature, ‘Earnings Summary.’ You can go there to track the performance of all your links.

You can turn SiteStripe on or off, depending on your preferences. It’s worth learning how to use it, but you can turn it off if you prefer to work manually.

Extensive help resources

Amazon Associates is exceptionally simple to use for three reasons:

1. It’s a simple and efficient design
2. The popularity of the platform, including the wealth of information on online forums
3. The “Help” resources

Amazon itself provides guides on all its features. They also regularly update their “What’s New” and “Discussion Boards” pages.

These three factors make Amazon Associates arguably one of the best affiliate programs for beginners. It’s accessible to everyone, has a massive help library and online community, and is easy to use.

In addition to the extensive help resources, there are some integrations you can take advantage of.

Add-Ons & Integrations

Amazon Associates uses a uniform system for project management and payments.
Projects are managed from inside the Associates Central. You can track performance and earnings from the Earnings Summary.

Your earnings are held in your account. If your balance meets the minimum threshold ($10), you will be paid monthly. While it’s not part of the set-up process and not needed to make an account, you need to give your tax information to accept payments.

All Amazon associates are paid via direct deposit, check, or Amazon Gift Certificate. Payments are typically made at the end of each month, with a 60-day delay. For example, your earnings for March 2024 should be paid automatically at the end of May 2024.

How easy is the setup?

Amazon Associates only requires you to create an account to get started. To set up an account, you need to:

1. Provide your Amazon account information OR create a new Amazon account
2. Connect your website(s) and mobile app(s) to your Amazon account
3. Create an Amazon Associates profile
4. Connect your bank and payment method
5. Start using Associates Central

This is relatively simple. To speed up the process, be prepared to provide proof of ownership of the websites you want to connect.

Once your account is set up, you can start building links and collecting commissions.

What are the Amazon Associates dashboards like?

Amazon offers dashboards that are thorough but simple. They are unintimidating and easy to navigate for complete beginners.

Amazon also offers an explanation of all the titles on their dashboards. This ensures that you understand precisely what they mean in each part of the dashboard.

Is there a steep learning curve?

One of the top-selling points of Amazon Associates is how easy it is to get started. If you come in with affiliate marketing knowledge and strategy, you’re ready to go. Amazon provides all the information you need to navigate their platform successfully.

Is there a training program involved in facilitating onboarding?

No training is required to start successfully using Amazon Associates. Amazon stays true to its brand identity of making things more accessible and more convenient. Simply using Amazon Associates requires little more than reading Amazon’s own guides.

Successfully engaging in affiliate marketing in general is another issue. Amazon itself offers little support in growing your knowledge and skills in affiliate marketing. Instead, they assume that you will learn independently and take advantage of their easy-to-use resources.

If you look up “Amazon Affiliates Training,” you will find:

• Some online courses from creators like Udemy
• Books sold on Amazon that teach affiliate marketing

Many of these resources teach about affiliate marketing more broadly. Others focus on Amazon Associates. But most simply focus on affiliate marketing and have some content on Amazon and other leading platforms.

Does Amazon Associates have available integrations with apps?

Amazon Associates comes with all the payment features you need built in. However, some users may opt to integrate with OneLink.

OneLink enables Amazon associates to earn commissions internationally. Otherwise, you would need an account for each country in which you want to earn money. Fortunately, OneLink offers an easy solution for managing everything from one account.

Users must take a few steps to use OneLink. But Amazon provides a complete OneLink setup guide.