Chances are you have more than likely heard of Amazon affiliate niche sites and all the potential they have if built correctly. They can be extremely profitable if you build them correctly and if you choose the right niche. The truth is that the majority of people who build an Amazon affiliate niche site call it quits well before the first year.
Part of this is due to the inaccurate information that is pushed by most people and a lack of understanding of how long it takes for Google to even notice brand new websites. In this post we will aim to debunk some of the most common myths when it comes to building Amazon affiliate niches sites and how to build an Amazon affiliate niche site correctly from the start so it can be successful long term.
But first let’s get some basics out of the way.
What is an Amazon Affiliate Niche Site?
First, websites are websites.
An Amazon affiliate niche site is simply a method for monetizing your website through the Amazon associates’ program which is focused on building content around a targeted niche. You monetize your website if a visitor clicks on a link and purchases a product or service on Amazon. This is one of the primary methods for monetizing your “amazon affiliate niche” website.
You can also monetize your website through the Amazon influencer program which is slightly different from the Amazon associates’ program and can offer additional monetization methods for your website.
Checkout our full article below that will give you more insight into how the Amazon influencer program works.
Recommended Reading: Amazon Influencer: Everything You Need to Know to Become an Amazon Influencer
A lot of changes have come to website monetization in 2022, and monetizing your website with Amazon is still a viable business model, but doing so successfully requires some important research before you even begin building the website.
The Steps to Build an Amazon Affiliate Niche Site
Niche Research and Selection Process
It doesn’t matter how cool your website design is, how well you can rank your website in Google and anything else you may have heard about building a website. If you don’t select a viable niche, your website will simply fail to produce any substantial earnings.
Performing the right niche research for your website is extremely important before you begin building your website. If you fail to do this correctly, your “niche” website will never succeed.
Let’s look below at how to do the proper niche research to confirm that the niche you are considering exists and that it has enough traffic to build a website around. Before you start the process of building your website, it’s important to perform the necessary due diligence and confirm some factors about the niche you chose to pursue.
Below are some basic questions to help you start your niche research process.
- Does the niche have enough interest?
- Is the niche seasonal
- What level of competition does the niche have?
- Can the niche be scaled?
- Who are some of the main competitors in the niche?
- Can you promote Amazon affiliate products for the niche?
Does the niche have enough interest? Performing Keyword Analysis
This should be the first stage in your niche research, and it involves finding out if the niche has enough interest to build a website around. The most effective way to find this out is by performing keyword research through Google Keyword Planner or through an alternative search engine vendor.
Recommended Reading: How to Use SEMRUSH for Keyword Research – Full Guide for Beginners
If you are planning on building a website around camping for example, you should check out the kind of volume and competition that is around the term “camping”.
Checkout the results below from the Google Keyword planner tool.
We can see that the keyword “camping” receives approximately 1-10m search queries per month, and it also has low levels of competition. This isn’t a clear indication as to whether you should start a camping website.
It’s just the starting point of your initial keyword research to confirm there is adequate search interest in the niche. From here you must go deeper.
You must begin to think about certain things that an individual might search for who is interested in going camping.
This can include things such as:
- Camping equipment
- Safety camping
- Camping products
- Camping sites
- How to setup a tent
- Camping dos and don’ts
There will be a combination of informational, product, and geographical search queries that a user might have an interest in regarding camping. These can apply to all niches and will serve as a basis for confirming interest and competition.
The next part is finding out if your niche is seasonal or not.
Is the niche seasonal?
The seasonality of your niche can have a huge impact on the ability of your website to be successful. Your website’s traffic will fluctuate greatly if you have a seasonal niche. But it doesn’t mean you can’t build a successful website around a niche, simply because it’s seasonal.
So, how do you find out if your niche is seasonal?
One way to do that is by looking at the search query trends in Google Trends and seeing how the search traffic fluctuates throughout the year.
Let’s take a look at the term “camping”.
We can see that the camping niche is popular, but it is a seasonal niche.
The traffic and interest for camping goes down during colder months as less people go camping during the colder season. Just because a niche is seasonal, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build a website around it.
You need to just be aware that your website’s traffic and revenue will fluctuate greatly in different months of the year.
Most people who build niche websites will tell you to completely avoid seasonal niches, but if you don’t mind fluctuating traffic and revenue throughout the year, they can be great because most people avoid them and as a result there is less overall competition.
What level of competition does the niche have? (low, moderate, high)
Accessing competition in a niche is important because it will help you determine how difficult it is to break into that niche and what kind of effort it will take to rank your content in Google. One way to determine this is by searching related queries in your niche in the Google Keyword Planner tool.
Start with a single keyword and check out other related queries to your main keyword to see what kind of traffic and competition they have.
From our main keyword “camping” we can see different search queries that are related to camping that we could possibly explore such as:
- Outdoor adventure
- Outdoor recreation
- Campsites
- Camping accommodations
- RV park
- Trekking
- Backpacking
This is where we can continue to dig into our keyword research a bit deeper to gain a better understanding of our niche.
Looking at the overall competition of our camping niche we can see that there is enough interest and competition based on the volume of certain search queries.
The search volume for our main niche keyword is extremely high (1m-10m) search queries per month, along with moderate to high competition.
This is a great confirmation that there is adequate interest level and competition in the camping niche.
Can the niche be scaled?
Being able to scale your website is an extremely important factor to consider before building it out. This can be discovered during the initial keyword research process.
The main keywords of your niche and variations of your main keywords should have a minimum of at least 100k searches per month for your niche to really be scalable.
Anything less than that will make it difficult to scale your website unless you completely dominate in the SERP’s.
Who are some of the main competitors in the niche?
Competitor research is quite fun to do.
It’s important to access competitors in your niche and see how long their website has been around, how many articles they have published and what kind of traffic and revenue their website is receiving. It’s also a good idea to see how frequently they publish articles and how long they tend to be on average.
One tool you can use to spy on your competitors and see what they are doing successfully in their content strategy and website framework is SEMrush.
SEMrush features a competitive research toolkit that will allow you to see very revealing information about your competitor’s website data.
You can discover data about your competitors such as:
- Traffic trends and competitors share
- Top competitors in your niche
- Website traffic stats and sources
- Concentration of marketing efforts
- Organic ranking stats
- Keywords gaps and opportunities for ranking
- Backlink analytics and so much more
Performing competitor analysis will give you a good idea of what type of content you must produce regularly on your website to compete with other websites in your niche.
This is the preliminary research that should be carried to help you make an informed decision about the niche you should pursue for your Amazon affiliate website.
There is also another important question to also consider when selecting your niche.
Can you promote Amazon affiliate products for the niche?
Is your niche conducive to promoting affiliate products on Amazon?
If your niche happens to be in the outdoor or camping space, it’s quite obvious that you can recommend products to people who have questions about camping. You can recommend and review camping tents, camping gear, camping sites and so much more.
If you happen to select a niche which doesn’t recommend physical products, then you will have a difficult time making money from the Amazon associates’ program.
As such, it’s important to make sure that the niche you are thinking about building a website around has the potential for product reviews, guides and opinions on certain products and services.
What kind of commissions can you earn for your niche?
This is another important question to consider when selecting your niche. What kind of commission structure does your niche have in Amazon?
Below is a snippet of Amazon’s current commission structure as of 7/30/2021 for different product categories.
Now that you have a better understanding of your niche potential it’s time to begin building your website out.
The first component to building your website is registering your domain and setting up your hosting plan.
Domain Registration and Hosting Setup
Picking the right domain for your website can be confusing if you have never had any previous experience with setting up a website.
Check out our full guide here below for a full breakdown of this process if you are new to building websites.
Recommended Reading: How to Pick the Right Domain Name for Your Website: Step by Step Guide
After you select your domain name it’s time to find a good affordable hosting provider for your website.
Our top recommendation for a starter Amazon affiliate niche site is Bluehost.
They are extremely affordable and reliable for hosting your website and getting it setup with WordPress. They have a ton of resources on your website to help you get everything setup.
Below is a full step-by-step video to help you set up your domain and hosting directly through Bluehost. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4SqpC6IVDbc
Niche Website Theme Selection
After you install WordPress on your domain and get your hosting set up, it’s time to find a great looking website theme. There are available WordPress website themes for free directly through the WordPress marketplace, but if you want to find more custom options for your Amazon affiliate niche site, checkout ThemeForest.
They have tons of resources for WordPress websites, plugins, themes, and custom code to help you build an amazing website.
Content Production Schedule For Your Niche Site
Once your website structure is built out, it’s time to come up with a consistent content production schedule which you can stick to.
Nothing kills Amazon affiliate websites more than not producing consistent and high quality content. If you publish one or two posts a month and forget about your site for a few weeks you won’t really get any tangible results.
As such, it’s extremely important to come up with a consistent content production schedule which you can stick to. Try starting out with publishing at least one post a week and then slowly increase it over time as you get in the rhythm.
How much Money Can you Make with an Amazon Affiliate Niche Sites
The amount you can earn from your Amazon affiliate website can vary greatly across the board. There are a ton of different factors which can have an impact on your website’s ability to make money.
Some of these include:
- Your website niche
- Amount of content on your website
- Website structure
- Website speed
- Your websites and article rank in Google
- Amount of time your website has been active
If you build your website correctly from the start with white hat SEO practices and create great content, your Amazon affiliate website can earn a decent chunk of change.
Depending on your niche and many other factors, your website’s Amazon affiliate niche site can make anywhere between $10-$25 bucks per 1,000 visitors.
Some websites can make quite a bit more if they utilize their email list and add different revenue sources in addition to Amazon.
Examples of Successful Amazon Affiliate Niche Sites
OwnTheYard
Own the yard is an outdoor style website and covers many different topics such as yard games, gardening, backyard design, animals, backyard gear and more.
The website receives over 200k organic visitors per month according to SimilarWeb.
The owner of the website, Spencer Haws built this site over 2 years ago and it’s consistently making him roughly $6k/month from Amazon affiliate commissions and ads. This is what’s possible from a site like this. Check out some of the content for yourself.
ThisiswhyImbroke
ThisIsWhyImBroke is a novelty style website which promotes fun and quirky products which you can purchase on Amazon and other websites which have an affiliate structure. This website has been around for almost a decade and it brings in over 1.7 million visitors per month.
It’s estimated that this website brings in approximately 70-100k per month in commissions and ad revenue. It’s a perfect example of how serious some of these websites can be depending on the kind of action you take.