Passive Income…!! This is the dream of the majority of the bloggers. Sitting on a beach at Pondicherry and writing blog posts while getting the money periodically credited in your bank account. Sounds fascinating, right?

Coincidently, this is doable and a lot many bloggers are making tons of passive income. In this post, I’ll walk to through one of the best passive income source- Amazon associates. First, let me show you some proof.

Amazon Affiliate Earning Proof

Honestly speaking, I’m not showing my income proof to brag. Moreover, I only make a minority of my earnings with amazon associates. However, there is a big reason why I’m showing this report. Here, I want you people to understand that you too can make money from a real blog using affiliate marketing.

These days, the problem with the online/digital marketers is that they have never earned any money from a real blog. I mean, they are just earning money by teaching others “how to make money”. Ask any other popular online/digital marketer about their own successful blog in any other niche (lifestyle, fashion, finance etc) and the truth will be revealed. They won’t have any another successful blog in the real niche (other than the ones where they teach blogging). That’s why they will never understand the real problem that most bloggers face.

Before starting this blog, I’ve started two blogs. One failed and the second become successful. First one was an entertainer website and second was in the finance niche. And even here, I’m only sharing the earning report for my real blog- Trade Brains. As I’ve faced the problems myself, that’s why I can truly understand the difficulties. Moreover, I also understand the true potentials of a blog as I’ve also made money through them.

Anyways, enough of my philosophies! Here is the earning report of Trade Brains from Amazon associates for the last year (2017).

Yes, I know that isn’t much. But as I’ve already told you, amazon associates only contributed a minority of the earning from Trade Brains blog. Moreover, this is a totally passive income. I didn’t focus much on affiliate earnings last year. Just wrote a few affiliate blog posts and placed some links in between. That’s all. Nevertheless, as my blog is getting more and more traffic, my monthly Amazon affiliate income is exponentially growing.

Now that you have understood that you can earn good passive income through amazon associates, lets further learn about this affiliate program.

Also read: 9 Tested Ways to Monetize Your Blog- #6 is My Favourite

What is amazon associates?

Amazon Associates is an affiliate program offered by Amazon.

Affiliate marketing is an arrangement by which an online retailer pays commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referrals.

In simple words, affiliate marketing for bloggers is a way to sell products without owning or creating one. Here, you are just diverting your blog traffic to some specific products, which are owned/created by someone else and making profits on sales.

It’s really simple to make money from affiliate marketing for blogger and it requires only 3 steps:

1. Find a product or service that you like
2. Promote that product/service to your blog readers
3. Earn a small profit (as commission) for each sale that you make.

For example, let’s say you are a photography blogger. And you use a specific DSLR Camera in all your photoshoots. You can promote this camera using an affiliate link from Amazon. If any of your readers buy this camera using your link, you will get a commission for that sell.

Also read: The Go-Getter’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers

How much can you earn from Amazon Associates?

Here are the commission rates offered by Amazon associates–

Clearly, you can notice from the above table that you can earn a commission up to 12% on the sale of different products. The highest commission is on the Men’s apparel and clothing products. Further, you can also conclude that the fashion or lifestyle bloggers who promote these products can make a better income.

Let’s say a blogger is promoting a sports shoe worth Rs 3000. Here, he/she will get a commission of Rs 300 per sale. Moreover, if he/she is able to get 100 sales on that product in a month, they will make Rs 30k in a month. (Moreover, you can always promote multiple products).

Why my commissions were low from Amazon associates?

My write-in finance and investment niche. The only products that I can promote on my blog are books. Further, the average costs of books are between Rs 200 to 500. Therefore, for each sale, I would have made a commission somewhere between Rs 20 to 50.

Now, even if I’m able to make 200 sales (double sales than a lifestyle blogger) in a month, still the net income will be between Rs 4k to 10k. That’s why my income from Amazon associates was low.

Overall, the income from amazon associates depends on your blogging niche. If you are just starting your blog or planning to start -I’ll definitely suggest you to carefully choose a niche which you can monetize easily.

Also read: 9 Most Profitable Blog Niches to Start Blogging.

Few Simple Tips to Increase revenue from Amazon Associates.

The biggest tip to increase your revenue from Amazon associates is to select a profitable niche. However, here are a few other tips to increase revenue from amazon associates—

1. Look at the reviews of the product on Amazon before promoting. The last thing you want is to get your reputation hurt by someone else crappy product.
2. Write the product review and share your honest opinion about the product. (In my case, I wrote book reviews for few of the popular investing books).
3. The links in between the posts work the best. This is because when a reader gets involved in your post and you suggest something really awesome, he/she will be inclined to check out that product (and maybe even purchase it).

Bottom line:

Amazon associates is an amazing way to monetize your blog and earn passive income. You can sell thousands of products through your blog and earn a decent commission. It doesn’t require any additional work or efforts.

All the money that I earned last year through Amazon associates were totally passive. This year, I’m planning to try out a lot of experiments to increase my revenue from affiliate marketing. And, I’ll keep sharing my learnings.

Keep hustling and happy blogging.

Also read: How I Build an Email List of 18,000+ Subscribers Within 13.5 Months (From Scratch)?