Is The Amazon Affiliate Program A Scam? Or Can You Make Money With It?

I’ve been affiliate marketing for over a year now, and have seen some pretty good results. But a question that is often asked is are there better affiliate programs than others, and if so, which ones are they?

Of course, the #1 affiliate program that continues to come into people’s questions is the Amazon Affiliate Program. Is it legit? Or is the Amazon Affiliate program a scam? Hopefully we can shed some light onto the subject, as well as show you a few people who are using the Amazon Affiliate Program successfully.

What Is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

The Amazon Affiliate program is a place where you can make money by promoting Amazon products. You simply register to become an affiliate, and if you are approved, you’ll be given access to creating affiliate links to nearly anything that Amazon sells.

If people purchase something through your link, meaning if they click on one of your affiliate links and buys something, then you’ll make a small percentage of what they paid.

This is how many affiliate marketers, myself included, make money.
Amazon is one of the leading companies that sells products online, and its little wonder that they have an affiliate program with it.
So their program is no scam. But that doesn’t mean that the Amazon Affiliate program is actually any good, right? Just because a program, product, or site is legit, doesn’t mean that it can be worth you time.

Is The Amazon Affiliate Program Worth it?

If you are an affiliate marketer, or looking to get into it, is Amazon’s program worth getting into?

It depends on what you’re trying to promote, and what you’re looking to make. You see, Amazon gives you a percentage of what people buy according to the product type.

As you can see from the screenshot above, certain things that you promote will make you more money than other things. So for example, if you are promoting Televisions, you’ll only make 2% of what a person buys.
So if a person buys a $500 dollar television, you’ll only make $10 bucks. Now on the flip side, if you are into pet products, and someone comes to your site, and buys $500 dollars worth of dog chow (a rather large amount), then you would make $40 dollars (since pet products get an 8% commission).

So it boils down to whether you’re promoting things that will give you a higher commission. There are plenty of other affiliate programs that will give you a better commission for selling TV’s.

Another thing you want to look into is what you’re actually selling. If we go back to dog chow and pet products, we can find a good example.
If I promoted Purina Pro Plan FOCUS Sensitive Skin & Stomach Adult Dry Dog Food, I would make around $4 dollars for every bag I sold. While this may seem great, the reality is that if I wanted to make $100 dollars a day, I would need to have around 25 people to buy dog food through my link per day!

But, if I promoted a PawHut 77″ x 38″ x 69″ Large Wooden Outdoor Cat Enclosure Catio Cage with Ramp and Covered House (basically a rather expensive cat house), I would only need to make about 3 sales per day for me to reach my $100 dollar a day threshold.

So, all the above to say, Amazon is worth it if you are promoting products that have high commissions and that are relatively high priced.

Can You Make Money With The Affiliate Program?

Now comes the question of if you can actually make money. And the answer is yes, you can make money with it. And a lot of it.

Below are a few people who have made money with Amazon, and their success stories.

Myself!

I know, I don’t have as cool a story as people below, but I have made some money with Amazon. This was before I knew what I wrote about above. And so I promote products that didn’t get a lot of commissions, hence the reason why I made very little.

I know, you’re thinking, only $48 dollars? I’m showing this more as proof that if you follow my advice above (and the success of the people below), then you’ll make much more than this.

This also shows that you can make money with Amazon, even if you don’t promote as actively as you should (I didn’t promote amazon a lot last year, but still may a few bucks).

So where are the real success stories?

Josh From Oz

Josh has been affiliate marketing for a lot longer than I have. He started an Amazon Niche site, a site that promotes Amazon products, and tried to see how much he could make within a year’s time.

He decided that he would publish 3 articles every 2 weeks, which would give him around 75 articles on his site at the end of the year.

After working on his site for that year, his site made nearly $500 in month 12 of the site’s existence.
I contacted him about his site two years after he started his site, and he said that his site was making around $1000 per month, and he only worked on it part-time (if you even call it part-time work).

Click here to read the full story, where Josh breaks everything down month by month!

Craig

Craig has been slowly been building his success outward with affiliate marketing, and specifically with the Amazon Affiliate Program.

While he hasn’t made a super large amount of money, he did make over $1700 last month, in December 2018.
As you can read from his article, he is hoping to try to break 5 figures this year at some point, and hopefully build his business larger than it is right now.

He’s definitely on the right track, and will continue to succeed, provided there isn’t any major hiccup with his site, or with Amazon.

Dylan Reiger

Dylan Reiger is truly a master at making money online. He’s built some successful businesses around Amazon, and has had amazing results.

He started a site, and in month 7 he was able to pull a $4000+ dollar amount from his site – and this was just on one month of commissions!

He has actually since sold that site for $40K, and started another site, hoping to make as much, and even more than his previous site’s.

You can take a look at his month 7 report, where he explains more about what he was doing at that point, and how he was so successful.

Is The Amazon Affiliate Program A Scam?

I don’t believe that Amazon’s Affiliate program is a scam, and neither do I think it’s not worth it. I would highly recommend it if you are just starting out, or if you are interested in affiliate marketing. Amazon is usually easy to join, and pretty simple to use.

Dom W, the owner of Human Proof Designs, a 7 figure business, wrote why he thought Amazon was the best affiliate program for beginners. I would highly recommend that you check it out.

Help with Affiliate Marketing

All those people above are all members of Wealthy Affiliate (WA), and owe some of their success to WA. WA is a site that is dedicated to helping people with affiliate marketing, and giving you the right tools and training to make you succeed in making money online.

They offer a free starter membership that you can take a part of, where you’ll be given a free trial to their keyword research tool, two free websites, the first course of their training, as well as a 7-day trial to certain premium features.
Check out my review of them here today!