Working with the Amazon affiliate program (Amazon Associates) has been a great way for affiliates to monetize their website traffic and earn commissions through referral links. Whenever someone purchases Amazon using your link, you get the commission immediately.
The program offers payout commissions ranging from 1% to 10% depending on the product category. With a huge range of products, a global customer base, and the great reputation it has — you can easily find something to promote and earn well.
Today we are analyzing a case study showing how Itzik Atia was able to grow his site’s earnings from scratch to $4 000/ month and then scale up to almost $24 000/ month.
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Let's dive into this article...
Building the Site
After failing to take off with a small niche site making only $200 — $400/ month from product review articles, Itzik finally decided to launch a new Amazon affiliate site. The site was to cover 5 major categories, which were:
- Home improvement
- Tech
- Sports
- Outdoors
- Tools
He wrote 585 buyer guides each having 3 000 words plus with the help of freelance writers for the first 2 and a half years. At this point, the site was making $2 000 — $4 000/month.
After speaking with a couple of friends in the industry that owned sites with a similar amount of content, he realized that they were making over $30 000 — $50 000/ month — unlike him. For a long time, he couldn't figure out how to make the big breakthrough. It was until December 2019 when he decided to fix all his articles by making patches — that’s when he saw improvements.
Fixing and Growing the Site
Itzik hired a bunch of freelance writers to do patches and fix all of his articles. He also hired an SEO specialist to analyze and compare each of his articles with those of his competitors. The analysis was made for:
- Looking at what sections he was missing;
- Checking their word count;
- Checking how many backlinks they had for each post.
Building Backlinks
Since he couldn't procure backlinks to all his hundreds of posts, as it would cost over $100 000. Itzik decided to promote about 100 articles. For 3 months, he reached out to over 1 000 blogs asking for his links to get inserted in existing articles or to be placed as guest posts. He was able to secure over 350 backlinks in this period by sending and answering emails for over 10 hours/ day. Each post had an average of at least 3 backlinks.
The Results
Within a few weeks, he went from making around $4 000 to $7 000 in January 2020, $7 500 in February 2020, $13 671 in March 2020, and $23 774 in April 2020.
Selling the Site
However, this income didn’t stay consistent after Amazon decided to cut its commission rates on some products. Also, his revenue dropped because of a new Google algorithm update. For that reason, ended up selling that site for $200 000 in just 30 days after listing it with a broker. That was the bitter-sweet ending to this site.
Itzik was able to generate 6 — figures in affiliate commissions by promoting Amazon products during the site’s existence before selling the website. The biggest changes happened when he decided to fix all the site's content and create a massive investment in backlinks. The time and work that he put in this paid off at the end of it all.
Tips From Itzik on How to Build and Increase Earnings of an Affiliate Website
- Build a single category or niche site. Do not go for too many categories.
- Write high-quality, long-form content that’s 3 000+ words for buyer guides.
- Take your time to publish great content. Do not add too many posts at once, quality will diminish — this was his biggest downfall.
- If you already have a site, remove posts that have zero traction after 6 months or rewrite the post completely.
- Hire virtual assistants and freelance writers from Upwork to edit your posts, add images, links, charts, etc. It will save your time and allow you to manage the business part better.
- Keyword research is everything. Take your time with it.
- Go for topics people don't already cover. Strongly consider using "allintitle" and go for keywords under 200 results, or use the Key Golden Ratio method.
- To add display ads on your site for extra monetization, consider using Ezoic, Mediavine, or Adthrive. Adsense payments are not good enough.
- It’s better to opt for a niche that you are passionate about. But consider that it’s not so competitive, and it has the potential for creating many posts.
- Buying backlinks is an expensive method, but if you think about the income you create and a 35-40x valuation on monthly earnings, it pales in comparison. Some people still think dropping $100 000 on backlinks is crazy, but you have to look at it as a business, not a hobby.
- To get backlinks, reach out to 1 000s of blogs. Look at where your competitors are buying from using Ahrefs.com. Create lists of target sites. Then use hunter.io or a VA to scrape emails and get to work!
- If you are building your affiliate sites with a plan to sell them later, it’s better to use online brokers like Empire Flippers or FE International. Although, they will charge you a commission fee after the sale of about 15%.
Alternative Ways to Monetize Your Site
Recently, Amazon reduced the commissions paid to the affiliates working in their program by over 60%, and it seems like they are planning to phase out their affiliate program. As an affiliate, you should be in a position to react quickly to such changes so that you keep on generating passive income from your hard work. Before you consider selling your site, you should try applying other monetization methods like:
- Promoting affiliate programs from other big websites like eBay Partner Network, Rakuten, ShareASale, Clickbank;
- Generating leads for local businesses;
- Promoting offers from affiliate networks, among others.
