At times I find myself surfing around the internet looking and looking and looking. There’s not always a lot of doing. One of the things I end up doing during these times is to look for and analyze Amazon affiliate website examples.
I should probably be spending time building an affiliate site instead, but I spend time trying to figure out if they are successful or not, why they might be ranked for one keyword or another and probably a looking at bunch of other statistics that are really just a bunch of useless information unless I actually understood the reasoning behind why someone was writing a post about a certain product. Mostly I like to find sites that are, or seem like they are, successful as affiliates of Amazon. Some things I do think are useful though is to see how much traffic some of these Amazon affiliate sites are getting, and what kinds of keywords they rank for.
What is an Amazon Affiliate Site?
An Amazon affiliate site is a website that is created and published with the intent to earn money through Amazon’s affiliate program. It’s been said that this is the easiest program to get started with if you are looking to create some affiliate passive income. Don’t get me wrong though, you can’t expect to just throw together a quick site, slap some affiliate links and start making money.
Sure, the process is simple, and it’s easy to get links to products on Amazon, but you have to provide some value to your readers. You have to give Google a reason to send those who are searching for something to send them your way. Create great useful content and the traffic will come.
Amazon’s affiliate program, officially known as Amazon Associates, allows individuals and businesses to earn commissions by promoting and linking to Amazon products. Here’s a basic overview of how the Amazon Associates program works:
- Sign-Up: To join the Amazon Associates program, you need to sign up on the Amazon Associates website. You’ll need an Amazon account, and you’ll be asked to provide some basic information about your website or app, as well as your preferred payment method for receiving commissions.
- Product Selection: Once you’re accepted into the program, you can start selecting products from the vast array available on Amazon. You can promote almost any product that is sold on the Amazon platform.
- Get Affiliate Links: For each product you want to promote, you generate a unique affiliate tracking link through the Amazon Associates dashboard. When users click on your affiliate link and make a purchase, Amazon can track that the sale originated from your referral.
- Promotion: You can promote Amazon products through various channels, including your website, blog, social media, email newsletters, or other online platforms. It’s important to disclose your affiliate relationship transparently.
- Earn Commissions: When someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase within a specified timeframe (usually 24 hours, but it can be longer for certain products), you earn a commission on the sale. The commission rates vary depending on the product category, ranging from around 1% to 10% or more.
- Payment: Amazon pays out your earned commissions on a monthly basis, usually through direct deposit or gift cards. However, payment methods may vary depending on your location.
- Compliance with Program Policies: It’s crucial to adhere to Amazon Associates Program Policies to avoid any issues. This includes guidelines on how you can promote Amazon products, restrictions on certain types of content, and other rules to ensure a fair and ethical use of the program.
Keep in mind that Amazon’s affiliate program terms and conditions may change, so it’s a good idea to regularly review the program policies to stay informed about any updates.
What Makes a Successful Amazon Affiliate Website?
Over time I’ve come across a large number of affiliate site examples that promote all kinds of products but for today let’s focus on a list of Amazon affiliate website examples. You have probably heard of a lot of them. These are in no particular order, just that they use Amazon for some of their affiliate marketing.
Outdoor Gear Lab
Here’s a pretty big site that I come across often when I’m searching for Amazon affiliate website examples, Outdoor Gear Lab. They have more of a narrow focus on outdoor gear as implied by the name. They claim to have “The world’s most in-depth and scientific reviews of outdoor gear.” One of the really unique things I like about the way they do their reviews is that they buy all of the products they review, just like normal people would. The idea is that this helps them keep objective in their evaluations and reviews of products as opposed to reviews and evaluations that sponsored by the manufacturer. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the site’s statistics:
Website: outdoorgearlab.com
Domain Registered: 2010-02-07
Organic Search Traffic: about 1,912,158(SEMRUSH)
Organic Keywords in the top 100 results: 444,448
Top Keywords: fanny pack, outdoor gear lab, sleeping bag, outdoorgearlab, backpacks, camping shower, binoculars, hydroflask, camp shower, canopy tent (2022-10-19)
Outdoor gear lab has it’s own name as one of the top search spots with approximately 9,900 searches a month. You can also see by the top keywords that there is more of a focus toward outdoor gear. Fitting for the name of the site.
Family Camp Tents.
After looking through Outdoor Gear Lab, I thought it would be interesting to find a site that was a little more niched down, so I searched for family cabin tents and came across this site, familycamptents.com. It ranked pretty good in the search. It’s all about camping tents. There are reviews on many kinds, “best of” lists, tents by the number of rooms, tents by the shape of the tent, and posts that cover other features of different kinds of tents. Although it would be great to have a massive site like The Wirecutter or Outdoor Gear Lab, realistically anything I start on my own would probably focus on one thing, kind of like this tent site. It seems pretty well set up. There are detailed reviews on almost every kind of tent with links over to Amazon. Here’s a breakdown of some of their stats:
Domain Registered: 2017-10-27
Website: familycamptents.com
Organic Search Traffic: about 74,429
Organic Keywords in the top 100: 11,693
Top Keywords: Inflatable tent, large family tent, ozark trail tents, 12 person tent, 20 person tent, 20 person 5 room tent, insulated tent, tent with stove jack, 10 person tent
Unlike the first two in the amazon affiliate examples, Family Camp Tents isn’t built out as big and doesn’t show up with its own name as a top search result. Basically, it has not become popular enough for people to recognize it as its own brand. Rather its main keywords are focused on the products it is marketing, like the different kinds of tents, their sizes, shapes and capacities.
Own the Yard
Here’s one that has a cool story with it. Own the yard is a site that is all about ideas for your yard. There are landscaping and gardening ideas, along with appropriate affiliate links. There are a bunch of backyard game reviews too. There are even posts about animals and how to deal with them. There are article that are reviews, how to, design steps, and more. The best thing about this Amazon affiliate site is that the site owner, Spencer Haws, publishes progress, stats and income updates from time to time. You can read about it on his blog, Niche Pursuits. This one is worth following if you are looking at starting an affiliate site because you can see the progress and learn from it as well. Here’s a breakdown of stats for OwnTheYard.com:
Website: owntheyard.com
Domain Registered: 2018-08-24
Organic Search Traffic: about 44,800
Organic Keywords in the top 100: 27,860
Top Keywords: Koi pond ideas, enclosed patio ideas, fund outdoor games for large groups, tree swing, croquet set, tree house ideas, pergola covers, balcony garden ideas, white picket fence, bbq party games ideas for adults.
As opposed to just building out a product filled affiliate site, Own the Yard is designed to help people with all aspects of their yards and everything you might do in them. Because of that, the site is set to become a large authority site as it continues to grow.
Inflatable Hot Tub Guide
Who would have thought that you could build an entire website around what sounds like one product that is so specific. I could see doing something like running shoes (over 200,000 searches a month) that has so many kinds of shoes for so many different types of runners. Another big single item might be something like treadmill, ( over 550,000 searches a month) with multiple brands, styles, and features. But inflatable hot tubs seems pretty narrow, but according to Webconfs.com the keyword itself gets 135,000 searches a month, not to mention all of the other related keywords and products that might come up.
Website: www.inflatablehottubguide.com/
Domain Registered: 2013-11-07
Organic Search Traffic: 21,900
Organic Keywords in the top 100: 2,231 (SEMRUSH 12/31/21)
Top Keywords: hot tub maintenance for dummies, intex hot tub review, lay z spa maldives accessories, la z spa palm springs running costs, lazy spa hot tub, hot tub care, lazy spa paris accessories, bestway la z spa dome, intex hot tub repair kit, hot tub canopy
Best Reviews Guide
Best reviews guide is just what it’s domain says. It’s a site that does reviews for all types of products. They claim to give the best product reviews in every category. To give it a test first typed in electric skateboard to see what came up. Instead of listing products a search results came up with a bunch of articles for different types and costs of electric skateboards. I went ahead and clicked on one and it took me to a page with a list of electric skateboards for the category.
Website: bestreviews.guide
Domain Registered: 2015-01-29
Organic Search Traffic: 803,817
Organic Keywords in the top 100: (SEMRUSH)
Top Keywords: portable tennis net, bestreviewsguide, hoover boards, lululemon kids
This is Why I’m Broke
This is a site that comes up a lot when looking for examples of Amazon affiliate sites. It seems so simple that anyone could do it, but it’s not as easy as it looks. At first glance, it seems like it’s just a bunch of pictures of random high priced, or weird and obscure things that people can buy online. If that’s what you think it is, well you’re pretty much right. However, thinking that you might be able to do the same could end up in time wasted. There was a lot of work that went into getting this site up and running, including the 444.1 thousand backlinks that go along with it. You can read how the site got started and popular on Redditt where the creator did an AMA interview here. Here’s a breakdown of some of the stats for the site:
Website: thisiswhyimbroke.com
Domain Registered: 2011-05-26
Organic Search Traffic: about 565,500
Organic Keywords in the top 100: 224,786
Top Keywords: thisiswhyimbroke, gifts for men, this is why i m broke, this is why im broke, funny gifts, pocket sand, this is why im broke com, tron bike, money soap, croc gloves.
This site has become so popular their number one keyword is the site name with over 33,000 searches a month. If you add in the variations, that puts the site up over 50k searches a month just from its name. Looking through the list though I thought money soap was interesting. Who would have thought that people searched for “money soap” almost fifty thousand times a month? Another interesting thing I noticed was that the traffic history was gradually and continually increasing. This is hard to do with all of Google’s updates that seemingly appear to hit affiliate sites hard. Sure there have been dips along the way, but if you look at the long term results, this one keeps on going up. To me, it’s a sign they are continually working and improving the site.
VACGUIDES
Here’s one I came across about vacuum cleaners. Specifically it is targeting vacuums for pet hair. That’s a pretty narrow niche, but it seems to be getting some traffic. Just thinking about things I might buy online and did a search. It wasn’t first on the list but was one of the first after a bunch of major retailers and manufacturers. It may be hard to compete with them for position, but alternatively there are those who will scroll down to get a more well rounded view as opposed to the view of the manufacturer as to why their pet hair vacuum is the best. Let’s take a look at some of the stats.
Website: bestvacuumpethairguide.com
Domain Registered: 2019-01-23
Organic Search Traffic: about 565,500
Organic Keywords in the top 100: 224,786
Top Keywords: best shark vacuum for pet hair, best vacuum for pet hair, best handheld vacuum for pet hair, dyson v10 animal review, dyson v8 animal review
There are so many ways to make money on the internet. One of them is through Amazon’s affiliate program. The question is, can you really make money from their program. I’ve read so much about how Google is targeting affiliate sites and how Amazon destroyed some affiliates income with their changes on the commission structure. It can still work though. If you build a site, keep it relevant and continue to publish content, it will gain traction over time. It will get some traffic and if you can provide content that helps the customer you’ll earn some affiliate income along the way.