Amazon Affiliate Program is the web’s most popular and stable affiliate program that has been paying affiliates since 1995 for advertising products ranging from new books, computer hardware, and used goods. Amazon associates can make money by advertising a wide range of Amazon products on their sites and blogs. Amazon Associate Program is one of the best money making opportunity that gives a steady income.

Sites appropriate for Amazon products are product review sites, blogs and stores. Webmasters who want to make money from their websites or blogs should join Amazon Affiliate Program since an affiliate can promote amazon products in the form of links, banners and widgets on their web pages. Affiliates can also create a niche aStore and link to their sites. An amazon affiliate can make upto 15% when people buy from their amazon links.
How to become an Amazon Affiliate?

1. Go to Amazon Affiliate Program site. In the left side column press the “Join now for Free” button. On the login page if you already have an Amazon account (that you created while purchasing products on Amazon). Otherwise, select “I am a new customer”.

2. You need not purchase anything while joining but will be asked for your website details similar to Google Adsense or eBay affiliate program. Enter the information about your website.

3. Select correct payee and payment information. You can get payments in your personal name or a business name. If you choose some other person then you have to furnish information about them too.

Fill all the details and submit. You will get a message saying that your website will be reviewed and intimated to you. My site site got verified within 2 days and also gave me an Amazon Affiliate id matching to my blog http://www.sfihomebizz.com

Amazon Products can be promoted in 3 ways:

1. Links & Banners: Linking Amazon products via text links and banners is the easiest way of advertising. Just advertise text links, image links and banners on your site or blog and you will get paid when somebody buys a product following these links on your website. Product links can be enhanced for getting real buyers by posting them in product reviews. Darren Rowse(problogger) has made many dollars writing reviews about camera and linking various camera from his photography blog.

2. Widgets: Widgets give rich content to your website content offering the Amazon functionality. Amazon is currently offering 15 different widgets offering contextual, digital and search widgets. My favorite widget is Omakase contextual widget as Amazon automatically places unique and ideal products matching the content of the web page.

3. aStore: This is an Amazon associate product store which you can yourself create a professional online store that will supplement your site or blog too by either embedding or linking to your site.

Features of Amazon aStore:
(a) A professional look and feel of the store with products or product categories you choose to keep visitors on your site a longer while they shop at your Amazon store.
(b) Online shopping store with shopping cart is generally thought as a trusted online store. Gain trust of your visitors by adding a shopping cart for multiple item purchases.
(c) Show Amazon Editor product reviews and themed product lists from Amazon.com customers.
I am a great fan of Darren Rowse and his Amazon aStore featuring digital cameras linking his photography blog is an excellent example.

4. Site Stripe: This is a new feature from Amazon.com that allows Amazon associates to create text links and product links directly from Amazon.com site without visiting Amazon Associates Central.

5. Twitter: Twitter is a great marketing tool to advertise Amazon products on Twitter and Amazon has rightly given a great way of advertising Amazon products for its associates. Directly go to a Amazon product page and press the “Share on Twitter” button from the top of the page.

It does not cost a penny to be an Amazon Associate. You just need a good site and a bit of product marketing knowledge. So join today.