Have you heard that you can make money by reviewing Amazon’s products?
This can be a semi-passive side income stream. But it requires a lot of hard work to earn your first pennies on the platform.
Let me show you exactly how to make money by reviewing Amazon products.
💡 In a nutshell: To make money with Amazon product reviews, you need to become an affiliate. Anyone can apply.
You then need to write hundreds of niche-specific blog posts and product reviews on your website that rank on Google. After a year of writing 3-5 hours every day, you might make your first $1,000/month.
Then it’s time to apply to other similar programs and multiply your earnings.
How Does It Work?
Amazon pays for product reviews in the form of affiliate marketing. (Don’t worry if you’re new to the term, I will talk about it in just a second).
In other words, if you (i.e. your website) manage to sell a product through a product review, you will earn a small commission.
For example, here’s a review post about headphones one can buy from Amazon.
This is actually the first result if you search for “Bose NC 700 HP Review” on Google.
Any time someone reads this review and is convinced, they can click the affiliate links and buy the product. Any time this happens, SoundGuys earns a small commission.
This is what you need to do if you want to review Amazon products and make money. You need to have a website where you review products and have the reviews rank on Google.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Let’s take a bit closer look at what’s affiliate marketing in general. This is because it’s what allows people to make money with those Amazon product reviews.
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing type where a company pays you for a desired action.
In simpler terms, if you sell something, you will get paid a small commission.
Any time you see a blog post or web page with product links, those are usually affiliate links of some kind.
For example, here’s a screenshot of one of my affiliate posts.
In this post, I promote AI writing services. If someone clicks those links and buys, I will earn a small commission.
Which brings us to an important point. Affiliate marketing happens through special affiliate links.
When you join an affiliate program, you get affiliate links to products.
If someone buys a product using your link, you earn a commission. This is possible through various tracking systems that you don’t need to worry about.
Just as an example, here’s one of my affiliate links to a service called CopyAI.
If I share that link, someone clicks it and makes a purchase, I will earn a commission.
That’s how simple it is.
I bet you start seeing those affiliate links everywhere after realizing this. 🙂
👉 In a nutshell, it’s like telling a friend about a great product you found on Amazon, and then getting a thank-you payment when they buy it!
What is the Amazon Affiliate Program?
Amazon’s Affiliate Program, also known as Amazon Associates, is a way for you to make money by recommending Amazon products.
If you have a website, a blog, or even a strong social media presence, you can share links to Amazon products.
When someone clicks your link and buys something, Amazon pays you a percentage of the sale.
Usually, this commission is about 0.5-5% of the price of the product.
If you look at the above table, you will see the commission rates in the program.
For example, in the furniture section, you can see that Amazon pays a 3% commission.
Example: If you sell a $100 piece of furniture, you will earn a $3 commission for it.
The best category is the games where you can earn a 20% commission.
How to Get Started?
Technically, you can start promoting Amazon’s products today. Setting up the review site (i.e. a blog) is not a big hassle.
But it takes a really long time to start getting visitors to that blog.
Anyways, here are the main steps you need to take:
- Sign Up: Go to the Amazon Associates website and sign up. It’s free and anyone can do that.
- Choose Products: Once you’re part of the program, pick products you like and want to recommend.
- Share Your Links: Use the special links provided by Amazon to share these products on your blog, website, or social media.
- Earn Commissions: When someone buys through your links, you get a percentage of the sale.
For best (and most consistent results), you need a website to promote the products.
But this makes it sound easy. Way too easy!
In the real world, it takes at least 3-6 months of full-time work before you start making any sales.
What Should You Expect to Earn?
Before I show you how to start a successful and profitable Amazon product review site, let’s run some numbers.
This way you will get a realistic expectation for what you might earn on the platform.
Let’s set our goal to hit $1,000/month from Amazon product reviews.
In affiliate marketing, you will typically see a conversion rate of 1-2%.
In other words, for every 100 affiliate link clicks, 1-2 people will buy that product.
Furthermore, in product reviews, you might see a 30% click-through-rate.
This means that for every 100 people who visit your product review, only 30 will click your affiliate link.
If we run the math, this means that for every 1,000 readers, the number of sales you’ll make is:
1,000 * 0.3 * 0.01 = 3
That’s 3 sales for 1,000 visitors.
Now, in Amazon, the typical commission rate is 2%. This means that for selling a $100 product, you will earn a $2 reward.
Now, let’s say you review a product that costs $50. (This is realistic in most niches.)
So you will earn $1 for every sale made through your reviews.
To make $1,000 a month, you need to make 1,000 sales. As you might recall, you will make 3 sales per 1,000 visitors.
To reach 1000 sales, you need this many visitors
1,000 / (3/1,000) = 333333.3
So that’s roughly 300,000 visitors. That’s a lot!
But don’t go anywhere. I will later show you how you can easily 5x it with no extra work.
However, it’s vital to set realistic expectations.
It can easily take 1-2 years of working hard every day before one can make a living with this.
It took almost 2 years for me to build one affiliate site that now makes about $1,500/mo. Me and my mate have spent about 1,000 hours on this site in total.
Here you can see the performance.
This site is not an Amazon site, so the commission is much more generous. That’s why we can make $1,500+/mo with less than 10k monthly visitors.
I’ll talk about how to find better affiliate deals later, though. But for now, it’s great to start from Amazon.
How about you just want a nice side income?
In my experience, that’s not a good idea. This is just because of the nature of affiliate marketing.
The first penny is the hardest to earn. You might easily need to spend 500 hours before you make your first sales.
If you spend 500 hours (12.5 full working weeks) on something just to leave it on a side, that’s not a wise decision.
If you put in 500 more hours, you might make 100 sales. And 1,000 within the next. Then you can already scale to a team of freelancers if you want to.
I started blogging and affiliate marketing as a side hustle.
But I quickly realized it was “a trap”. After writing 500+ hours and earning just pennies, I noticed there was no turning back—it wouldn’t make sense to stop a big project and take an L.
I had to keep on pushing until I noticed it became a full-time business that I now teach to others. 🙂
Key Takeaway
To make your first $1,000/month from Amazon product reviews, you need to work hard every day for a year or two.
Step 1: Affiliate Marketing in Amazon
Amazon is an amazing place to start making money online.
However, it’s definitely not the best platform when it comes to making money.
You can make 5-10x more on other sites with similar products.
But Amazon is the easiest to get started with. This is because the product catalog is massive.
Also, basically, anybody can join the affiliate program. All you need is a website or app.
It’s easy to test the waters with Amazon.
Just launch a website, sign up to Amazon, and start promoting. You can try different products and niches and research what’s working for others.
Want to learn how to write a product review? Make sure to read this post next.
Only recommend products you have tried and trust (or at least have carefully vetted). You have to buy any products for testing because Amazon is not your “sponsor”.
In some niches, you might not need to try the products, but in others, it’s a must.
See what others have found success with! And remember that Google is getting better and better at understanding whether a person has first-hand experience with a product.
Once you make a bunch of sales, it’s time to negotiate better affiliate deals with other products in your niche.
Step 2: Start a Review Website
This is where the hard work starts. First, you need to find a niche, such as games, home devices, furniture, or whatever you think makes the most sense.
Don’t just choose a random niche, by the way. I have written a detailed guide on how to choose a niche, so make sure to read this post before you lock your topic.
There are countless niches available. To each of these niches, you can find products on Amazon.
Then you need to start a blogging website where you write those reviews. One example is to use a service like DreamHost to start your WordPress site.
Then you have to write a ton of niche-specific content to it to build trust in the eyes of Google.
Essentially, you need to become a part-time blogger from this point on.
Your goal is to push out quality content about your niche for Google. You want to establish yourself as a credible resource in your niche.
For example, to review a tech gadget, you can’t just write a review of it. This will never rank on Google.
Instead, you need to write a bunch of niche-related content for your website, such as new trends, coding tutorials, or such.
This way, Google trusts you more and might start showing your reviews high on the search results.
I’ve seen that it takes usually hundreds of posts for Google to trust a website.
This is akin to how professionalism works in real life.
If you want to buy a tennis racket, would you rather ask advice from a tennis player or someone who has never played tennis?
I bet you’d ask a real player with real experience.
This is exactly what you need to do with your Amazon reviews site. You need to show authority, and credibility, and become a reputable resource.
Anyone can review/recommend a product without even testing it. But only a few can add actual value.
Step 3: Use Social Platforms
Having a website is the most consistent, easiest, and least work-intensive way to make money on Amazon’s affiliate program.
However, another common approach is by creating a YouTube channel or a TikTok channel.
But this usually means you have to be in front of the camera and practice your English skills to shine.
Thus, I don’t really recommend doing this step because it will probably mean another year of hard work without results.
But if you happen to have a knack for being in front of the camera, you might find some products to promote.
Just remember that on most social platforms the conversion rates are even smaller than on a blog. Especially on a platform like TikTok, most viewers won’t click on any links.
To make a good income with social media content, you need to have literally millions and millions of views in those affiliate posts.
Step 4: Create Video Reviews
One cool way to make your Amazon product reviews stand out is by embedding a video into it.
I do this on my normal blog posts all the time.
Although this step sounds similar to the previous one, it’s not quite the same.
Instead of fully committing to a social platform like YouTube or TikTok, you can create a video every now and then—just to strengthen your review blog posts.
Google usually shows video reviews in Google search results:
That’s exactly what could happen to one of your reviews. But once again, if you’re not comfortable in front of a camera, this step is definitely not a must.
Step 5: Don’t Forget Search Analysis
Don’t just blindly write random product reviews.
For example, don’t write a random post about your dog or your yesterday. That’s simply not going to cut it.
Some topics are way too competitive.
Then there are products that nobody is searching for.
And then there are also products that people would rather not buy online but in a physical store instead.
Consider a product like tennis balls.
Someone who’s looking to buy tennis balls is usually in a hurry. They want to buy those in 15 minutes before playing with their mates.
Thus, having a tennis ball offer on your blog might not be the best bet when it comes to making money online. Very few people want to wait 4 days for their balls to arrive.
On the other hand, consider something like a cool piece of clothing or art. Those are what people don’t immediately need and are easily willing to wait for.
So before you even start, choose a niche and topics so that you actually have a chance to make money.
The best way to do this is by seeing what others have found success with. Try to find other affiliate sites in your niche/related to your topic.
Do they clearly have some buzz going on? Do they update their blogs regularly? Do they have cool offers and a ton of affiliate posts?
If someone else has succeeded in your space, you probably will too!
Step 6: Monetize with Ads
If you recall what I mentioned about making your first $1,000/mo from Amazon, I mentioned that you probably need hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to your blog.
Well, guess what? That’s so much traffic that you can probably earn thousands of dollars with ads on a site like that.
So in reality, that 300,000 monthly page views could earn you $1,000 from Amazon products.
But you could also apply to an ad network to make an extra $2,000-$4,000/mo depending on your niche.
Also, you might be able to negotiate 5-10x better affiliate deals.
So in reality, that 300,000 page views on a review site is more like $10,000/month rather than $1,000.
Step 7: Negotiate Better Deals
As I mentioned earlier, it’s vital to not stick with Amazon. They pay a lot less than other products in your niche.
Once you make your first consistent sales every month, you can start negotiating better deals with other companies in your industry.
You might easily land on 2-5 times better affiliate programs than what Amazon has to offer. In some niches, that boost might be even 10x.
But that’s far ahead in the future. For now, just focus on building your website and having it rank on Google in your niche.
Wrap Up
Now we’ve just scratched the surface.
With this high-level overview, you now have an idea of what it takes to make money reviewing Amazon products.
But to actually do it, you need to learn more. So make sure to read this post next. It covers all the basics of affiliate marketing, how to set up a website, and such.
It applies not only to Amazon but to affiliate marketing in general—which is exactly what you should do.