AmaLinks Pro® SiteStripe Migration

Build a High-Performance Amazon Affiliate Website

[Step-by-Step Tutorial]

Chapter 4

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

Chapter 4 – Monetizing your Content

Now we’re getting to the really good stuff! Your website has some useful information, a product review, and a top ten list all ready to monetize.

Until now we have left out all affiliate links for a few reasons.

The first reason is that I wanted you to be 100% focused on writing your content and getting your site ranking in Google as fast as possible. You won’t get much traffic right away anyways, so don’t waste time monetizing when your content is not even ranking yet. You’ll get faster results by monetizing after your website is up and running.

The secondary reason is that you don’t want to signal to Google that your website’s only purpose is to generate affiliate commissions for yourself. By leaving out all of the affiliate links as your site gets off the ground sends Google signals that your website is all about quality informative non-commercial content.

Google sees this as valuable to the user and will hopefully rank your website in the search results faster. Focus on high-quality content first, then monetize.

Focus on high-quality content first, then monetize.

That’s all great while you’re building up to your website’s full set of “starting” content, but now it’s time to monetize!

We’ll be adding plain links within the text, image links, product showcase boxes, comparison tables, and call-to-action buttons – all guiding your website visitors through your affiliate links earning you commissions!

Let’s get started!

Signing up for Amazon Associates Program

The Amazon Associate Program is 100% FREE to join.

sign-up-for-amazon-associates

If you are already an Amazon affiliate, you can skip over this section and dig right into monetizing your posts as outlined in the sections below.

If you are NOT an Amazon affiliate already, visit our article on all of the countries that have the Amazon Associates program available.

Amazon Affiliate Countries

Find your country of residence and sign up for the program. If your country does not have its own Amazon affiliate program, many of them allow people from ANY country to join.

I recommend signing up for the United States affiliate program unless your website solely targets visitors in your native language, because of the volume of sales.

Action Steps 4.A – Signing Up for the Amazon Associates Program

  • Visit our Amazon Affiliate Countries post.
    • Find the country you want to sign up for, follow the link for the official website and complete the signup process.

Monetizing your posts with AmaLinks Pro®

This tutorial is all about high-performance, and that applies to Amazon affiliate linking as well. We will be using the AmaLinks Pro® plugin to insert all of our affiliate links to make it as fast and easy as possible. You can purchase AmaLinks Pro® here if you still need to.

AmaLinks Pro® No-API mode or API mode?

If you are a brand new Amazon affiliate without any successful commissions in your account, you will not be given access to the Product Advertising API right from the start.

In the past, this would have prevented you from benefiting from the high-converting time-saving features that the best Amazon Affiliate plugins offered.

AmaLinks Pro® however has a No-API mode built-in so you can start adding high-converting product showcase boxes and product comparison tables right away.

This will help you achieve the minimum of 3 successful sale referrals Amazon Associates requires to gain access to the API. Once you earn your first 3 successful commissions, you can turn off the No-API mode and use AmaLinks Pro® with the API from thereon.

AmaLinks Pro® No-API Features

amalinks-pro-no-api-features

Learn about AmaLinks Pro® No-API mode.

Here is a link to the AmaLinks Pro® No-API Link Creation Tutorials. Read through that tutorial first to see what your linking options are and how to use them.

You will also need to use the Amazon SiteStripe tool in conjunction with AmaLinks Pro® to get the best results. Here is a tutorial on how to link with the Amazon SiteStripe Tool.

Learn About Using the Amazon API with AmaLinks Pro®

Here is a link to our tutorial on everything you need to access and connect to the Amazon Product Advertising API. This will get you all set up and connected.

Here is a link to our tutorials on all of the AmaLinks Pro® basics. These tutorials will teach you all of the basic link types AmaLinks Pro® can create with the API.

Here is a link to our tutorial on using the AmaLinks Pro® product comparison table generator. The responsive product comparison table builder deserves a whole tutorial of its own. This can be a very powerful way to get a lot of clicks on your Amazon affiliate links.

Action Steps 4.B – Using AmaLinks Pro® for Inserting Amazon Affiliate Links

create-amazon-affiliate-linksAdding Amazon Affiliate Links to your Informational Article

Let’s start here. Your informational article should be rather long and informative. The objective for monetizing this type of article is to work in affiliate links naturally within the text and images. You can also add product showcase boxes and comparison tables where appropriate, but don’t force them.

The idea is to keep the article focused on the information, while quietly adding multiple affiliate links or links to your product reviews and top ten recommendations.

This will provide the reader lots of opportunities to click your affiliate links, while not distracting them from the main information.

Action Steps 4.C – Monetizing your Informational Post

  • No-API Mode Instructions
    • Add 3 – 5 text links throughout your informational article to related products on Amazon.
      • Use Amazon SiteStripe Text Links and the tutorial here. You can link to any page on Amazon, even search results or category pages using SiteStripe Text Link. 
    • Add 2 – 5 images using the SiteStripe Image Links & AmaLinks Pro®.
      • You can add the image links without AmaLinks Pro®, just using SiteStripe if you want, or get practice using AmaLinks Pro® and the No-API image link type, tutorial found here. 
    • Add one product showcase box using the AmaLinks Pro® NO-API Product Showcase Boxes, tutorial found here.

  • API Mode Instructions
    • Add 3 – 5 text links throughout your informational article to related products on Amazon.
      • Use AmaLinks Pro® to insert the text links; the tutorial can be found here. You can link to any page on Amazon, even search results or category pages using SiteStripe Text Links
    • Add 2 – 5 images using  AmaLinks Pro®.
    • Add one product showcase box using the AmaLinks Pro® Product Showcase Boxes tutorial found here. 

      * If you have trouble finding places to naturally add text links, images, or the product showcase, you can re-write some of it or add to it and write in opportunities to use your affiliate links. Get creative! 

      * Or you could add a new section called “Related Products You’ll Love” and add information about 2 or 3 related products. Get creative!

create-amazon-affiliate-links

Adding Amazon Affiliate Links to your Product Review

Adding affiliate links to your product review is very easy because it is designed to entice readers to click one of your high-converting affiliate links.

amalinks-pro-showcase-simpleRemember when we wrote your product review using our outline?

I had you skip all of the affiliate content added with AmaLinks Pro®, but now it’s time to add it!

Here is the demo product review post for you to use as an example. When you are finished with your product review, it should be almost exactly the same format as this example – just a different product and all different text.

Action Steps 4.D – Monetizing your Product Review Post

  • Look over our demo product review, so you see what you are building. Refer to it as often as necessary.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a text link with your product name as the link text within your opening paragraph.

    * By now, you should be familiar with how to add all of the AmaLinks Pro® link types with or without the API, whichever method you are using. I won’t divide the tasks by No-API mode and API mode from here on.

  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Product Showcase Box underneath your intro paragraph.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Call-To-Action Button right before the “Features & Benefits”  heading.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Large Amazon product image centered after all of the Features & Benefits.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Call-To-Action Button right after your Large Amazon product image.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Call-To-Action Button right before the Embedded Video heading.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Call-To-Action Button right after the independent reviews.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert another Call-To-Action Button right after the Amazon user reviews.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a final text link within “The Bottom Line” section using the product name.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, insert a Product Comparison Table with this product and 3 to 10 similar/alternative products at the bottom of the entire post as our last section.

create-amazon-affiliate-links

Adding Amazon Affiliate Links to your Top Ten Recommendations Post

This is another easy post to monetize. The point of the post is to recommend a certain number of products, give the reader a small amount of information about each product, and entice them to click your affiliate link to learn more.

Action Steps 4.E – Monetizing your Top Ten Recommendations Post

  • Add a 2 or 3 sentence intro paragraph at the top of the post, something about the topic, products, or whatever kind of post-intro you can think of.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, create a Product Comparison Table with all ten products in it, and insert it right after the new intro.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, Add a centered Product Showcase Box under each of the ten product summaries you have written.
  • Using AmaLinks Pro®, add an Amazon affiliate product image link to each of the ten products, right under each product title before the product summary.

Once you have all of your posts monetized, you are ready to move on to the next chapter and put the final touches on optimizing your website’s technical performance.

Some Final Thoughts

Now that you are monetizing your website, you can go ahead and do it at the same time as you write your content. Your website is up and running and it’s time to grow your content!

Switch From No-API to API Mode in AmaLinks Pro®

As soon as you have three successful Amazon commissions in your Associate’s account, you are eligible for the Amazon API. Here is a step-by-step tutorial we wrote with everything you need to know about the Amazon API and get it connected.

I recommend this because it unlocks the ability to search for products to link to right within your WordPress dashboard, and you no longer need SiteStripe at all to create image links.

With the Amazon API, you can utilize the full power of AmaLinks Pro®.

Questions?