Very few marketers would argue with you in saying that Amazon affiliate websites are one of the easiest ways to get started with internet marketing and making money online. Earlier this year however, there was a bit of a shake up as Amazon changed their affiliate payment structure and left many affiliate marketers losing a significant part of their income. Thankfully, there’s a silver lining, and if you’re currently running an Amazon affiliate site, then you may be leaving quite a bit of money on the table. If you haven’t started your site yet, then you’re going to want to check out this information as well, so that you can be sure you earn as much as possible if you’re starting your own Amazon affiliate site.

How The Amazon Associates Program Works

Amazon Associates ProgramIf you aren’t familiar with the Amazon Associates program, here’s a very quick and simple rundown. Basically, you create links on your site that point to Amazon, and if someone makes a purchase within 24 hours of clicking your link, or 90 days after adding it to their cart. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it is but is also isn’t. For more internet marketers, that’s exactly where they will leave things. Create a link to Amazon and call it a day. There’s a little bit more work that needs to be done though, if you’re really wanting to take your Amazon earnings to a whole new level. You see, there’s actually more than just one Amazon. You may already know this, but Amazon actually operates out of 13 different countries, and even better, there’s an associates program for each site except for Australia.

What Countries Does Amazon Operate In?

As I briefly mentioned above, Amazon Associates operates in 12 different countries presently, including:
  1. Amazon CountriesThe US
  2. Canada
  3. The UK
  4. Germany
  5. France
  6. Italy
  7. Japan
  8. Spain
  9. India
  10. Brazil
  11. Mexico
  12. China
As you can see, there are quite a few countries that Amazon is currently serving, and guess what, you need different affiliate links in order to get commissions from each one.  So, for example, if you’re just sending traffic to Amazon.com and someone in The UK clicks on one of your links and makes a purchase after being sent back to Amazon.uk, you aren’t going to make a commission. As I’m sure you can easily imagine, you are most likely getting traffic and clicks on your site from other countries. That’s why it’s so important to make certain that you take the time to set up your Amazon links in a way that you can collect commissions from your visitors who live outside of your home country. The good news, once you’re up and running with Amazon, it’s pretty easy to get on board with the other Amazon Associates programs across the world. The first step is to create associates accounts in each country where you plan to send traffic. For the majority of people, you aren’t going to necessarily need to join every program, but more than likely, you will need to join at least a couple of them.  For clarification, before signing up for Amazon Associates in other countries, make certain that you are actually getting traffic from that country to your site. You can do this by checking your location overview in the Google Analytics toolbox for your site as seen below:

Google Analytics Toolbox

Amazon Affiliate Commission Rates Revealed
As you can see in that image, if this webmaster isn’t a member of the international Amazon Associates programs in The UK, Canada, and India, then they’re leaving up to 32% of their revenue on the table.  It’s not too hard to imagine just how much money that could be with a site that has a decent amount of monthly traffic coming its’ way.

What To Do After Signing Up For International Associates Accounts

Now that you understand how important it is to make certain you aren’t leaving commissions out there, and you’ve taken the time to sign up for the program in other countries, it’s time to understand the final piece of the puzzle.  See, just having associates accounts in other countries isn’t enough. You also have to make certain that your links are being delivered properly to people in those countries who click on them. This is where link localization comes into play. First, there’s a lot of information online about localizing your links to Amazon, and it can be really confusing. We’re going to be keeping things nice and easy though. That’s because there are services out there, that are very affordable, that will make creating your localized links a breeze. One such service that I recommend to people for doing this is Geniuslink All you have to do is add your tracking ID from each country once, and they make certain that your traffic ends up on the right site for your visitor’s country. If you want to check them out, they offer plans as low as $9 per month for 10,000 clicks, and they even have a free trial so you can see if it’s worth the investment for you before you ever spend a penny.

Amazon Commission Rates

In the US, Amazon changed their commission percentages earlier this year. Now, instead of increasing your commission percentages based on performance, there are set percentages based on product categories as you can see below:

Us Amazon Commission Structure

While many of the categories above such as Electronics and Video games had set commission percentages in the past, there were several that were grouped into the sliding scale performance based model, and that’s why so many people use this and offer services like overwatch boost for games online.  In other countries such as Canada, Amazon is still using the sliding scale commission structure, and some other countries that are using set percentages have completely different commission rates setup. You can find each countries individual commission structures listed below:
  1. Canada
  2. The UK
  3. Germany
  4. France
  5. Italy
  6. Japan
  7. Spain
  8. India
  9. Brazil
  10. Mexico
  11. China

Final Thoughts

As you can see above, even with the changes to the US Amazon Associates Program, there are still several different ways that you can really boost the value of your website, and add more cash to your site’s earnings.  By knowing what steps are important to take, you can ensure that your site is achieving its maximum potential. These are the types of things that are actually covered by me over at Wealthy Affiliate in the weekly live courses that I teach. If you’d like to know more about my live training courses, and more about Wealthy Affiliate in general, you can check out my full review here.
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6 Comments

  1. Hey Jay,

    I know this is an older post but just wanted to let you know that Amazon now has an Associates program for Australia. It cant be linked via Onelink and only has text Affiliate links but it is there.

    1. Hi Jay, is it possible to work as an amazon affiliate even though they don’t operate in my country?

      Please send me complete details as I am in Pakistan and how I earn money from Amazon, whereas Amazon is not in Pakistan.

  2. Hi Jay!

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