Amazon Affiliate Program Quick Guide

Making Money with Amazon Affiliate Program

This entry is a continuation of our series on affiliate marketing. There are lots of affiliate programs out there, but most of them do not accept Nigerians. Among the ones that accept Nigerians, Amazon is on the top list.

What is Amazon affiliate program all about? 

Quick Guide to Setting Up Amazon Affiliate Program

To sign up for Amazon affiliate program, follow this link: http://affiliate-program.amazon.com. Once you sign up for the program, you are given a tracking ID that is unique to you and is used to track the number of people whom you have referred. Everybody that gets to Amazon through your link and buys any product within a specified period of time will be recorded as referred by you and you will receive a commission.

To start making money, you are expected to browse through their online store and select the products that you will like to promote. Each product has its dedicated product page and you are able to generate a customized link to that particular page for every product that you want to promote. This generated product page link is customized with your unique tracking ID.

When anybody clicks on that link and lands on the Amazon product page, your ID is recorded for that page. And if the person happens to buy the product or any other product, you get a small percentage of the price of the product as your commission for that sale. The more people you are able to refer to Amazon with your link, the more money you will make, just like Jumia affiliate which we have earlier elaborated.

One good thing is that Amazon pays commissions not just for the product which you referred someone to buy but also for any other product that the person buys within the period of 24 hours after they get on the Amazon website through your link. This is made possible with the help of cookie which is a very small computer program saved on a visiting computer by the Amazon website. When a buyer clicks on your link and lands on the Amazon website, a cookie is automatically saved on the buyer’s computer.

This cookie contains your tracking ID and remains active on the buyer’s computer for a period of 24 hours. During this time, whenever the buyer or anybody else buys something from Amazon using that same computer, you will earn commissions on every item paid for and shipped.

Most times you will discover that you earn commissions on items that are not even related to what you are promoting. For example, when someone clicks on your affiliate link and lands on the product page on the Amazon website, they may or may not end up buying that particular product. Even if they do not buy that particular product, they may still buy other products which they find on the website. Now as long as these other products are purchased within 24 hours of when the buyer first landed on the Amazon website, you will get the commissions for everything that they pay for during that time.

The Amazon website is highly optimized to entice visitors to buy and buy and keep buying once they land on any page. A popular saying by successful Amazon affiliates is that most of the time, all you really need to do is just to try and get people to Amazon through your affiliate link. As long as you can get them there, the Amazon website will do the rest of the marketing in the very best way possible.

How Does Amazon Pay Her Affiliates

Amazon offers three different ways by which affiliates receive their commissions. These are

• Check,
• Amazon Gift card, and
• Direct deposit.

Only the first two methods are available for Nigerians but you cannot get cash from the gift card, you can only use it to buy things on Amazon. This leaves us with only the check option.

Check Payment for Nigerians

Amazon issues and sends you a check written in your name and denominated in dollars. The check is sent to you from the USA through regular NIPOST mail or sometimes through registered mail or courier and will be delivered to your address.

Amazon has a minimum payout level of $100 for check payments. This means that you must have accumulated up to $100 by the end of the month then your check will be sent when the payments for that month are being processed. If you do not get up to $100 in a given month, what you have will be rolled over and added to the next month and subsequent months until you cross the minimum threshold.

The biggest drawback to Amazon affiliate marketing business in Nigeria is that getting Amazon payments can sometimes take many months (6 to 9) before it finally hits your bank account. This might prove to be unappealing and discouraging if you are just starting out but the key is patience and endurance.

The good thing is that if you do not relent on your efforts, you will eventually get to the point where you will be able to cross the minimum threshold consistently month after month. By the time you get to this stage, the delays will become more bearable.

Amazon issues check 60 days (two months) after you cross the minimum threshold. So if you have crossed the minimum by the end of July, the check for that month will be issued by the end of September. Amazon also provides the ability to set your own payout threshold but the minimum is $100 and you cannot set it lower than that.

The payment cycle has four stages:

1. Cross minimum threshold
2. Check sent (60 days after crossing minimum threshold)
3. Check-in-transit: It takes an average of between 1 to 4 Months for the check to reach Nigeria (depending on how they send it. Sometimes a normal post is used and sometimes registered post or maybe courier services like UPS).
4. Check clearance: When you receive the check, you are to go to your bank and pay it into your domiciliary account. The bank staff will assist you in doing this. It normally takes 21 days for the check to be cleared and the actual cash to appear in your bank account and available for you to withdraw.

How to Cash your Amazon Payment in Nigeria

As mentioned earlier, Amazon pays you via a foreign check which is sent to your address. If you sign up under the United States locale, this check will be issued in dollars. This check can only be cashed using a domiciliary account.

A domiciliary account is a kind of account that can be used to process dollar payments here in Nigeria. This type of account is operated by most Nigerian banks. Different banks have different requirements for opening a domiciliary account. These requirements may also vary from state to state.

A good example of a bank that one can open a domiciliary account is GTBank. For more about their domiciliary account, check their website for details.