The Amazon affiliate program is open to almost everyone. Non-sellers can use it to earn a part-time or full-time income by promoting items sold on Amazon. Sellers can use it to do the same, but they have the added advantage of potentially earning additional revenue from sales of their own products as well.
Although payment rates for Amazon affiliates are not the highest in the industry, the relatively low commission rates are outweighed by how the program operates, and, by the high conversion rate (I’ll explain ‘conversion rate’ in a minute).
Will 2025 Be a Good Year for Affiliates?
Yes.
Due to the increase in online shopping, Amazon’s customer base keeps growing. At the time of writing this post (the end of 2024), the number of active Amazon customers is approximately 310 million, with the split between men and women being around 50/50. More customers equals more opportunities for affiliates.
Amazon is beginning to use AI to provide shoppers with more personalized offers and recommendations, making these recommendations more relevant to the customer and increasing sales for sellers and affiliates.
What About the Competition?
Because the Amazon affiliate program is one of the easiest affiliate programs to earn with, it’s also one of the most popular options for affiliates. However, that doesn’t mean it’s saturated or new affiliates can’t succeed; they can! The key is to focus on a specific niche or product type and create useful or interesting content related to that niche or product type.
Everything you need to know is detailed in the 5-Step Plan to Earn $100K-$150K a Year With an Amazon Affiliate Website/Blog, which you can download for free.
It’s also worth mentioning that many would-be affiliates aren’t serious and will never take the time to understand or implement the things required to succeed. I don’t know the exact numbers, but having been in affiliate marketing for more than twenty years and, during that time, having been part of numerous groups and communities related to the subject, I would estimate that only one in three affiliates are serious. This means that the majority are not part of the competition in any meaningful way.
Conversion Rates are Higher Than Ever Before
Here we go again with this ‘conversion rate’ thing. So, what does it mean?
Simply put, it’s how many times a desired outcome is achieved relative to how many times it could be achieved.
For example:
If 100 people visit a website that sells refrigerators and 2 out of that 100 buy a fridge, the conversion rate is 2%.
(2/100) x 100 = 2%
Or, if on a particular day, 373 people visit a specific listing on the Amazon platform and 28 purchase the item offered for sale on that listing, the conversion rate is 7.5%.
(28/373) x 100 = 7.5%
Conversion rates matter to both sellers and affiliates. The higher the conversion rate, the more sales are made; the more sales are made, the more affiliate commissions are earned. Amazon has an excellent conversion rate, which runs as high as 15%, and when it comes to Prime shoppers (customers who are enrolled in Amazon Prime), the rate is reported to be as high as 74%.
