Is Amazon affiliate program worth it or not? pros and cons

Hi, I’m Praneeth Kumar.

In this blog, you will learn whether is Amazon associate worth it or not and should you be an Amazon associate and start affiliate marketing with Amazon or not in 2021.

So without further ado let’s get started.

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What is Amazon Associates?

Amazon associate is an affiliate marketing program of Amazon which is the largest e-commerce website on the internet.

Bloggers, digital marketers, and influencers can earn money sending people to the Amazon store through a unique link called Affiliate link through blogs, videos, mobile apps, and social media posts and

earn money as a referral commission from all the products people buy within 24 hours time along with the product You promoted after visiting Amazon through your Amazon Affiliate link online.

Let’s have a look at the benefits and drawbacks of the world’s largest affiliate program and whether Amazon associates are still worth signing up.

Is Amazon Associates worth it & should you be an Amazon affiliate?

I would say that Amazon affiliate is not worth it because it is just not good as an affiliate program as it has low Commission rates and a small cookie window with a bad past history of reducing Commissions and strict rules.

Although Amazon associate is a great option for new websites which want to make money instantly and in a short term.

If you want to make a good online source and revenue stream for yourself in the long-term affiliate marketing with Amazon Associates is not a good option to start with.

To help you understand why Amazon Associates is definitely not worth it, let’s have a look at 10 pros and cons of Amazon associates and learn whether it is worth being an Amazon affiliate or not.

Pros and cons of Amazon associates.

In this section will talk about all the pros and cons of Amazon Associates.

Let’s begin with the pros of being an Amazon associate.

Pros of Amazon associates.

Here are 5 benefits of the Amazon Associates program.

A wide variety of products are available to select and sell.

One of the good things about Amazon affiliate marketing is that you can have a large collection of products to choose from.

There are more than 3 billion products that you can choose to sell on Amazon associates.

From clothes to electronics to books to utensils to fashion, You just name it.

You have so many products you can choose from and start promoting on the platform.

2. Easy setup of the Affiliate account.

Setting up an Amazon account and getting approval from Amazon as an affiliate marketer is quite an easy and simple task just like shopping on Amazon.

Within 12 to 24 hours, you can get your account approved as an affiliate marketer for Amazon and start promoting the products on your website, mobile app, or social media.

3. People trust Amazon quite a lot.

Trust of the audience towards amazon’s e-commerce company is a huge factor why Amazon associates are a great program to choose and join to make money as an affiliate marketer.

As a matter of fact, Based on a survey of more than 2000+ US customers, 89 percent of buyers agree that they’re more likely to buy products from Amazon than other eCommerce sites.

It won’t be hard for people to get converted into customers if you sell Amazon associates products because of the trust that Amazon has got from the audience.

Because of which Amazon is both listed in the largest e-commerce store as well as the largest Affiliate program in the world.

4. Amazon is a lot safe, secure and reliable for both users and marketers.

Another reason why Amazon associates are so great and amazing is that.

It is one of the highly safest and reliable eCommerce stores for users and for affiliates.

As an affiliate marketer to Amazon, Amazon provides lots of tools and good analytics for tracking your links.

There is no chance for fraud in Amazon, All the sales and clicks on your links are tracked safely.

Talking about users, people use amazon so heavily for a reason,

Amazon is really great at selling and upselling products.
Amazon ensures user experience and user safety at No1 priority and respecting and safeguarding the privacy of users’ info all the time.
Amazon has lots of features like fast delivery and amazing offers which make users get back and buy products regularly.

This is the main reason why as a matter of fact, On average, SMBs located in the US sell more than 4000 items per minute.

5. Long shopping cart duration.

Amazon shopping cart expires after 90 days which means,

Whatever the traffic is sent to Amazon from your affiliate link within 24 hours,

even if the people did not purchase any product instantly or within 24 hours cookie window period but if they keep some product in the shopping cart and leave the store to buy the product in the future.

You as the affiliate marketer to Amazon who sent the traffic to Amazon will get the commission for all the products that people have added to their shopping cart within 24 hours cookie window and

if they buy the product before 90 days period until the shopping cart expires.

You will also get Commission to products which you did not even recommend but people bought it after visiting Amazon through your Affiliate link, saving in the shopping cart, and buying within 90 days.

To increase sales amazon sends regular emails to customers to remind them to complete the purchase in the Shopping Cart of the product and upsells the people while checking out this way,

Amazon helps affiliate marketers make money faster. this is a really cool feature about Amazon associates.

These are all the 5 popular benefits of the Amazon affiliate marketing program, now let’s have a look at the drawbacks of Amazon associates.

Cons of Amazon associates.

Even though Amazon associate is the largest affiliate program in the world, it is certainly not the best affiliate program in some terms.

Let’s have a look at some drawbacks of Amazon affiliate marketing and why Amazon associate is bad for affiliate marketing.

1. It is a highly competitive platform.

One of the biggest reasons why I feel Amazon affiliate marketing is bad is because every other blogger and Affiliate marketer is doing it.

It has become a General trend like,

Whenever people want to start an affiliate blog the first thought they think of is Amazon associates.

Because of which the last number of websites on the Internet are Amazon affiliate websites.

There is a huge competition for such reason,

I don’t mean to say that it is not hard to succeed in this competition but it takes more time and effort to beat the competition and make money.

Although this is not a huge disadvantage with Amazon it is definitely worth mentioning.

2. No PayPal service.

Paypal is an online financial service that allows you to send and receive money online.

This is a financial service that offers many freelancers, bloggers, and website owners,

who are dependent on Amazon associates from different countries other than the USA /UK to receive international payments.

Many Amazon affiliate marketers are from Asian and European countries.

Amazon Associates does not allow its affiliates to receive payments from this popular service whatsoever.

One of the reasons could be that PayPal is owned by eBay which is a competitor of Amazon.

3. Low Commission rates.

This is the main reason why Amazon associate is a considerably bad option to choose from for Affiliate marketing.

Their Commission rates are really very bad and low.

Affiliate commissions for different products in Amazon are between 1-10%.

The average Commission rate is 4%.

This is really bad because,

At the end of the day, people Affiliate marketing hoping to make more money online.

Because of Lower Commission rates people have to drive lots of traffic and sales to Amazon in order to earn a decent amount of money every month through Amazon associates.

You can have a look at the different product Commission rates of Amazon here.

So overall Amazon Commission rates are really terrible and bad compared to other affiliate programs because they offer better commission and higher cookie window.

4. Only 24 hours of cookies window.

The other reason why Amazon associates are bad is that it only offers 24 hours as a cookie window.

Compared to Amazon with other popular affiliate programs like ShareASale And

few others offer a large duration of cookie life like most popular affiliate programs definitely have at least more than one-day cookie life for sure, some have one-week others have one month.

The problem with 24 hours cookies duration is if people who visit Amazon through the affiliate link doesn’t buy the product or don’t save the product in the shopping cart before buying and

visit Amazon a day after 24 hours and purchases the product, affiliates don’t receive Commission because the person has bought the product after 24 hours of cookie window.

So Affiliate sales will not be tracked because cookies will get expired from the user Browser.

5. Rules are VERY strict.

The last reason why Amazon Associates is bad is because of their crazy yet strict rules.

Some rules are like,

If you don’t make a sale to Amazon within 90 days of opening your new account as an Amazon associate, your account will be shut downed.
You cannot promote affiliate products of Amazon on email with your audience.
You cannot add affiliate links outside your websites like an E-book and PDF file as a blogger.

I can’t talk about all of the rules here.

As an Amazon affiliate,

you should be highly careful with how do you promote the products of Amazon online because a single mistake from your side with or without your knowledge,

can lead to a permanent ban of your Amazon affiliate account without ever getting a notice prior and

your fantastic online business and revenue stream which is completely dependent upon Amazon associates can be shattered.

The main reason why amazon associate is the wrong option?

Along with all these reasons, the most important reason why Amazon associate is not worth it for the long term is that they have a history of reducing Commission of the Affiliate products.

Amazon has reduced the commission rate in 2017 without giving any notice to its affiliate marketers which caused an over 70% of cut in income all of a sudden and

they drastically reduced the commission rates in 2020 April during the covid pandemic from like 7-8% to 3-4% of commission rates for most of its products.

This has severely affected many bloggers and affiliate marketers around the world because the economic condition was really bad due to covid pandemic on top of that cut in commission rates.

This was a brutal decision for Affiliate marketers who were totally 100% dependent on Amazon associates as their revenue in such tough economic conditions worldwide.

Amazon has grown so high and huge largely because of these affiliate marketers who sent a lot of traffic to the store, but

Amazon doesn’t seem to appreciate the help of its affiliate marketers in its growth, Amazon might cut commissions in the future as well because,

According to TechCrunch, more people are directly buying products on e-commerce stores mainly on Amazon rather than moving from Affiliate links due to covid and social distancing and lockdown stuff,

so Amazon doesn’t really need Affiliate marketers that much to help it grow and for sales in the future.

Because of all these reasons, I say Amazon Associates is not worth it to do affiliate marketing in 2021.

There are three main reasons why I reject Amazon Associates.

Low Commission Rates.
Small cookie window.
Strict rules.

You might argue that Amazon has got a great level of trust from the audience,

yeah, I agree with that but at the end of the day, if you want to earn more money as an affiliate marketer of Amazon,

you need to send lots of traffic to Amazon every month,

there is always uncertainty whether the traffic that you send to Amazon will either buy the product within 24 hours or save the product in the Shopping Cart or not.

The normal conversion rate for Amazon affiliate products is 10% so to achieve a good earning portion you need a lot of traffic and sales every month mainly when you see there is no recurring revenue option.

These are all the pros and cons of being an Amazon affiliate.

With that being said let’s conclude the blog post.

Ending remarks.

There you go these are all the things you need to know about Amazon associates.

Do comment down whether you’re starting an Amazon affiliate marketing website or not.

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