Monetizing your WordPress site is important if you are looking to make money with it. The passive streamlining of income from a WordPress site can be pushed to a very fine limit with a combination of content that provides value to the readers, SEO-related adjustments that help your pages to stand out in the search engine, and a reliable monetization method.

One good way to monetize your WordPress site is with an Amazon associate. Basically, you must have an amazon associate account that is fully approved and you will be promoting products from Amazon that are being reviewed or relatable to your niche.

To prepare this setup with a WordPress site you might need some plugins that will help your business run smoothly. This guide shares some of the free amazon affiliate WordPress plugins that you can start using right away without having to pay extra bucks as a startup investment.

These free WordPress plugins provide a variety of features designed to increase Amazon sales, such as automated product updates and personalized recommendations, link localization, etc. Additionally, you can create a certain setup for your preferred amazon ads to appear on certain areas of the website without having to do it for every page. I have also included some essential plugins that maintain amazon associate disclosure for the entire website without needing your interaction. 

Overall, these free Amazon affiliate WordPress plugins help an Associate to start running a profitable Amazon affiliate website. Keep reading till the surprising bonus tool is added in the final section of this post.

Prerequisite for using these Amazon affiliate plugins

Not all the plugins in this post require a special setup before unveiling their true functionalities. Some of these plugins are really handy to configure. However, plugins like Affiliatetable do need access to Amazon’s product advertising API to be able to configure with your site.

Some other plugins may require additional on-page configuration to control their functionality based on your requirements, for example controlling Amazon affiliate disclosure on pages that has amazon products embedded.

As these plugins are free to use so you might feel the lack of features at some point however they are good enough to get kickstart your Amazon Affiliate site. Some of these plugins are freemium that come with advanced features when you consider upgrading to a premium plan.

To begin using these free Amazon WordPress affiliate plugins – 

1. Simply install the plugins and activate them to access their controls on the WordPress dashboard.
2. Next, you might need to add your Amazon affiliate ID (in some plugins)
3. You might also need to add PA API in certain cases too.
4. That’s should be good to start using them on your web pages.

That being said let’s dive into these amazing free amazon WordPress affiliate plugins you should definitely try out. 

9 Free Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugins 

1. Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate

Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate plugin allows your site to be compatible with Amazon trademark disclaimer and affiliate disclaimer. It’s very easy to use, just install the plugin, and no additional setup is required on your end. 

This plugin places the disclosure text from amazon at the right location of post-type pages, depending on plugin configuration. The disclaimers are set to ignore by Google so that crawlers do not pick anything from the disclaimer texts while indexing your page.

The disclaimer texts are fully editable and customizable however you see them fit on your pages. As for customization, you can utilize the classic editor environment to add additional html tags and design them via custom CSS applied to your site. 

Moreover, you will have global and custom control to adjust the requirement of disclosures on-page levels. It’s a simple but efficient way to control the utilization of the plugin because you might not need the disclosure on every single page.

Overall, this is a perfect plugin to have the FTC and Amazon disclosures on posts and pages! Its basic utility and simplicity make this plugin so awesome. Apart from that Disclosure for Amazon Affiliates is available for FREE on the WordPress repository.

Check the plugin here: Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate 

2. Site Buddy

As you grow amazon focused websites you will realize the need of ensuring correct affiliate tags are in place, broken links need to be fixed, and products that are out of stock need to be reviewed so that you are not losing your well-deserved commissions.

Sitebuddy is a tool that can manage all of that hustles for you. The way it works is by scanning your website’s pages, finding out amazon links, the crosscheck if the product ID is available in stock. In addition, it will check if the tags are correctly placed and link status. 

The best part is this is a freemium tool and the free plan lets you scan 25 pages per month. Another advantage is you don’t have to install any plugins on your site, everything can be managed via their dashboard.

Additionally, it ensures the pages that include amazon products are Amazon compliant with Amazon terms and conditions. It finds all the pages without Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer and asks you to add it so your Amazon Associate account runs safely.

Check this tool: Sitebuddy

3. Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon

As an Amazon Associate you know it’s important to have your affiliate tag included in any links that you share. The add & replace affiliate links for Amazon plugin ensures your links have the right affiliate tags so that you get the credit for your hard work.

This plugin automatically changes shortened amazon links (e.g., amzn.to) that hide the Amazon associate tag and replace them with long-form amazon links that embed your affiliate tag. It saves you a lot of time from manually changing shortened amazon links and adding correct affiliate tags.

Shortened Amazon links do have the affiliate tags assigned if they are created via Amazon associate site stripe, but in case you want your links to be visible with correct affiliate tags these plugins definitely help.

The plugin can automatically find and replace all shortened links on your website with long links that include your affiliate ID tag. This way, you can be certain you are earning revenue from every sale that’s made through your website.

Check this plugin: Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon

4. Ad Inserter

Ad Inserter is another free WordPress plugin that can be useful for your Amazon affiliate site. This plugin allows you to insert ads into your WordPress site. This can be useful when you want to display a certain contextual Amazon Native Shopping Ads or product box in all posts. 

Managing the ad blocks is pretty handy – all you have to create your preferred blocks and then set them for either manual or automatic insertion at any location of your web page. You can even control the visibility of blocks in your preferred page type.

A plugin like Ad Inserter fully packed with various important features for free is a no-brainer. It’s a powerful plugin that you definitely need to look at if you are serious about listing amazon products on your site without investing in premium plugins.

This plugin supports all types of ads, including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager (DFP), Amazon Native Shopping Ads, Media.net, Infolinks, and rotating banners. You can insert opt-in forms, header scripts, Javascript, CSS, HTML, and PHP anywhere on the page. In addition, the Ad inserter plugin comes with a built-in debugging, and ad-block notice tool.

Check this plugin: Ad Inserter

5. Thirsty Affiliates

If you want your links to look genuine and add a little bit more trustworthiness when sending someone over affiliate product pages, the Thirsty Affiliate plugin can help you. This is a freemium plugin that allows users to clock an outgoing link with custom slugs. 

ThirstyAffiliates also has special features to help you comply with Amazon’s terms of service, especially about link clocking, which is their smark uncloaking to stay under Amazon regulation. We have been using this plugin without any issues. 

With this plugin, you can insert links into your posts with ease. You can search Amazon from within your WordPress dashboard, find the product of choice and link it so that affiliate tracking is available in Thirsty Affiliate’s reports! 

The best part is you can get the basic plugin for free and later upgrade to the premium version once you are able to pull the desired result on your site. With the premium subscription, you can also get links placed automatically in your content for relevant keywords and geo-target your visitors.

Check the plugin here: Thirsty Affiliate

6. Affiliatable

Affiliatable helps you to build a product table and product box to showcase amazon products as an affiliate. With better visual representation the conversion can be improved and Affiliatetable is one of those plugins that make this work super easy. It also comes as a freemium plugin so you can definitely benefit from using it.

With this plugin, you can create high-converting product comparison tables, top product boxes, pros and cons boxes for products, and single product boxes. For this plugin to work you must have access to Amazon API. Other features such as geotargeting, in-depth click reports, and templates are available on the premium version.

Affiliate Table comes with similar features to AAWP which is a premium plugin, so trying out Affiliate table’s free version definitely worth it. With the free version, you can create unlimited tables and boxes for one website.

Check this plugin: Affiliatable

7. EasyAzon

As an Amazon associate, you would want to capture maximum profit from the products you have been reviewing and adding to your content. Well, EasyAzon does that for you, which is a free plugin with no premium plan.

Although EasyAzon is described as a plugin to improve conversion and increase profit with the geo-targeting feature it still lacks some of the advanced features available on similar plugins. Although, you can still benefit from the features it offers for free.

This plugin is compatible with the current WordPress version and frequent updates make it more convenient to use on your site. EasyAzon features an automatic link localizer, advanced analytics & reports, product popup from a link, and link clocking.

With EasyAzon, you can create text affiliate links directly to any product available for sale on Amazon.com without having to go through the steps of manually creating links from within the Amazon.com website. This saves you a ton of time and makes creating affiliate links much easier!

Check this plugin: EasyAzon

8. Amazon Link Engine

Amazon Link Engine is a free plugin that is actually a part of geniuslink. Geniuslink is a powerful tool for localization, link management, and link tracking. The Amazon Link Engine is a child of Geniuslink and inherits its localization and link management properties, however, to achieve these features you must create an account on Geniouslink, which is a premium tool.

You can download the plugin on the WordPress repository. It’s frequently updated and compatible with the current WordPress version. In the plugin setup, you can connect to Geniuslink too in case you have an active account on Geniuslink.

The plugin automatically converts existing amazon links localization compatible, so you earn commission from various country’s Associate accounts. Note that, even though your links will be automatically localized to be able to earn commission you must have an active account on Geniuslink. The newly added links on your WordPress site will get converted too.

Overall, Amazon Link Engine comes as an entirely free plugin with some limitations, which can be activated via having a Geniuslink account that turns out to be cheaper than many other similar plugins. You pay a small flat fee for a certain amount of clicks you receive via your site.

Check plugin: Amazon Link Engine

9. Product Comparision Table Generator

To display a nice-looking Amazon product table or product block with automatically updated price tags and description needs Amazon API. As you might know, nowadays, Amazon requires 3 valid sales and policy compliance for you to access their advertising API.

So as an alternative to building good-looking Amazon product tables that can be inserted inside your content without needing Amazon Advertising API, lab softsolvate’s Product Comparison Table Generator is one tool you would definitely want to give a try. 

It is simple but also an effective way to create eye-catching tables for the products on your website. You will have to assign Amazon product URL (affiliate URL), product name, product producer, and description. Once you add those you can select your preferred table color from the table control.

To get your table or product card into your WordPress site, add their CSS via WordPress customizer (one-time setup), and then add your table HTML wherever desired in your post.

Check this tool: Product Comparision Table Generator

Conclusion: Now you have these 9 plugins to set up your Amazon Affiliate website without investing a dime on Amazon product publishing tools. There are superior tools to go for if your budget allows you and you should definitely consider those premium tools. But that doesn’t mean the free tools available to you are not useful enough. These are for certain some of the great free tools you can use as an amazon associate.

There are many more WordPress sites. Bookmark this page so you find the rest when I update this post with more free amazon affiliate plugins for WordPress site.

You can also read:

• Top 5 Best Affiliate Programs That Pay Per Click [Updated]
• Amazon Affiliate Requirements – Disclosure and other Rules
• Earn Money With Amazon Affiliates – Top 10 Quick Growth Hacks
• 7 Best Niche for Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Amazon has drastically changed their Amazon Affiliate Program payouts as of April 21, 2020. It is not good for many of us! The net worth of people reading this has been cut by millions of dollars.

This guide is meant to provide you with highly actionable Amazon Affiliate earnings growth hacks, it will show you how to quickly earn more money with Amazon Affiliate sites. Not just ideas but the exact steps on how to most efficiently execute the hacks and begin earning more money from Amazon today! 

Implement these quick tips and make more money as an Amazon Affiliate! 

If you have just started using SiteBuddy.io this is also meant as a How-To guide so you can get the most out of SiteBuddy.io. 

Stop losing money and start earning what you deserve! 

This guide does not cover Content, Security, Speed, Display Ads and other general website management topics that are just as important. This is focused on growth hacking strategies to increase your earnings as an Amazon Affiliate. To get similar tips but for a broader range of topics checkout some of these great resources…

• WebsiteIncome.com
• EasyWins.io

Some of the tools you can use to make implementing these tips easier include…

• AAWP or AMALinksPro
• SiteBuddy.io
• Easy Amazon Disclosure Plugin (free)
• Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon (free)
• Ad Inserter (free)
• AMZ Images

The items below are organized according to the growth hacking ICE method of…

• Effort
• Impact

Quick Start Guide:

Many of these tips will need the information that SiteBuddy.io is able to pull out for your site. 

1. Signup to SiteBuddy.io 
2. Scan your site

Top 10 Amazon Affiliate Earnings Growth Hacks

#	Growth Hack	Tools I Use…	Effort	Impact
1	Earnings disclaimer on all pages	SiteBuddy.io Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Plugin	Easy	High
2	Fix Amazon Link Tags	SiteBuddy.io Add or Replace Links Plugin	Easy	High
3	Don’t Link to Removed Products	SiteBuddy.io	Medium	Medium
4	Don’t Link to Out of Stock Products	SiteBuddy.io	Medium	Low
5	Link to Ideal Top Earning Product Categories	SiteBuddy.io	Medium	Low – Medium
6	Use Comparison Tables	AMA Links Pro	Medium	High
7	Localize Links	AMA Links Pro AAWP Amazon One Link	Easy	High
8	Use Images	AMZImage	Medium	Medium
9	Create In Content Links	AMA Links Pro AAWP Amazon One Link	Medium	Medium
10	Place Native Shopping Ads (sidebar and footer)	Ad Inserter Plugin Amazon Native Ads	Low	Medium

One – Earnings Disclaimer On All Pages

This isn’t exactly a hack to increase earnings but it is an incredibly easy to execute step to ensure your site is compliant with one of Amazon’s biggest requirements – disclaimer in the right location on pages with affiliate links. 

Tool: 

• SiteBuddy.io
• Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Plugin

Procedure:

• Go to SiteBuddy.io
• Scan Your Site
• Wait for the Scan to Finish
• Go to Pages Report

• Install the easiest Amazon Affiliate Disclosure compliance plugin (free)

• Adjust the settings or use the default settings provided in the plugin.

• Rescan the site to verify 0 pages are missing a disclaimer

Additional Reading:

• https://websiteincome.com/amazon-affiliate-requirements/

Effort & Impact:

• Effort – Easy
• Impact – (potentially) Large

Two – Fix Amazon Affiliate Link Tags

There is nothing more frustrating then doing all the work to get traffic to your site and have them click on a link directing them to Amazon… to only find out that you earned no money from the products purchased since your affiliate tag was missing or worse… someone had swapped out your affiliate tag with their own, like some writers shockingly do. 

Tool:

• SiteBuddy.io
• Add or Replace Affiliate Links Plugin (free)

Procedure:

• Go to SiteBuddy.io
• Scan Your Site
• Wait for the Scan to Finish
• Go to Links Report

• Fix the links – using the bulk app from Hekkup
  1. Download the plugin and upload it on your WordPress installation
  2. Install and activate the plugin
  3. Go to Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon
  4. Make a backup by clicking Backup, just in case
  5. Enter the tracking code and click Update
  6. Voilá! Your links have now been updated!
• Rescan to make sure all links are fixed

Additional Reading:

• https://hekkup.com/add-replace-amazon-links-plugin/

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Easy
• Impact – Large

Three – Don’t Link to Removed Products

The Amazon Marketplace is always changing with products being removed. 

Linking to a deleted/removed product returns the page below… obviously not ideal for conversions!

Without knowing you are likely sending some people to this page on Amazon from your site.

Tool: 

• SiteBuddy.io

Procedure:

• Go to SiteBuddy.io
• Scan Your Site
• Wait for the Scan to Finish
• Go to Products Report

• Filter for Products that Don’t Exist

• Identify the page on your site/link that is pointing people to this error page

• Go to the page and fix the link pointing it to an instock product

Additional Reading:

• N/A

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Medium
• Impact – Medium

Four – Don’t Link to Out of Stock or Poor Quality Products

Similar to the issue above but not as big a problem… If you are linking to products that are not in stock the conversation rate will be negatively impacted. 

Tool: 

• SiteBuddy.io

Procedure:

• Go to SiteBuddy.io
• Scan Your Site
• Wait for the Scan to Finish
• Go to Products Report

• Filter for Products that are not In Stock

• Identify the page on your site/link that is pointing people to this product

• Go to the page and fix the link pointing to an instock product

Additional Reading:

• N/A

Impact & Impact

• Impact – Medium
• Impact – Low

Five – Link to High Earning Products – Category & Price

Amazon over the years has constantly adjusted their affiliate earnings (most recently April 2020). 

There can be a big difference in earnings if a product is in a low earning category vs a high earning category. 

Tools

• SiteBuddy.io

Procedure

• Go to SiteBuddy.io
• Scan Your Site
• Wait for the Scan to Finish
• Go to Products Report

• Filter for products you link to most frequently – alternatively check your amazon sales export to identify your top selling products and use SiteBuddy.io to search and identify which pages that ASIN is located on within your site.

• Review the top products to identify if there is a better product on Amazon to be linking to…
  1. Better sales rating
  2. Better reviews
  3. Higher priced
  4. In a category that pays a higher commission
• Change the links/page to make the page make sense to link to the better product

Additional Reading

• https://websiteincome.com/amazon-affiliate-earnings/

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Medium
• Impact – Low-Medium

Six – Use Comparison Tables

Never underestimate the power of eye-catching displays and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons for the products you are promoting. Despite the fact that you’ve published highly researched and well thought out content – the fact is, a very high percentage of your visitors don’t even read most of the content. They are just searching for quick answers to their search query.

When a typical visitor lands on your page, they will see the very top first – which is why it is extremely important to insert affiliate links towards the top of your page. We suggest using small product comparison tables towards the top of your pages. Some visitors will start to scroll down and scan the page. Even if they aren’t reading the content, vivid product showcases boxes will stand out and practically scream at the reader – click on me!

For those visitors who never bother to read your content – you still stand a chance to earn a commission by giving them the opportunity to click on one of your Amazon affiliate links. Inserting high-converting Amazon affiliate links can be extremely fast and easy if using the right tool.

Tool:

• AmaLinks Pro

Procedure:

1. Identify your product review content that gets traffic (use analytics)
2. Edit post in your WordPress editor
3. Identify the product (or products) that you are promoting in that post
4. Add high-converting Amazon affiliate links right after the introductory paragraph(s)
   1. Consider a product comparison table for multiple products
   2. Use a showcase box if your post is hyper-focused on just one product
5. Add more Amazon affiliate links throughout the content
   1. Use showcase boxes to break up the content and add visual elements
   2. Use image links with images provided by Amazon (must be pulled from Amazon API)
   3. Use CTA buttons to entice affiliate link clicks
   4. Use text links with clever placement throughout your content

How to Add Links with AmaLinks Pro:

Step 1(a) – Click on the AmaLinks Pro button in your WordPress editor (or find the AmaLinks Pro block in the Gutenberg editor) then type in your product search term (you never have to leave WordPress!)

Step 1(b) – Or, click the Table Builder button to open the Table Builder interface to quickly and easily add a comparison table or insert an existing comparison table

Step 1(c) – Select the product you would like to promote

Step 2(a) – Choose your link type (or copy your API-driven Amazon affiliate link)

Step 2(b) – Edit your link type (if desired)

Step 3(a) – Change link settings (if desired)

Step 3(b) – Insert link into post

Additional Reading:

• https://amalinkspro.com/amazon-affiliate-plain-text-and-image-links-vs-amalinks-pro/

Difficulty & Impact:

• Difficulty – Easy
• Impact – (potentially) Large

Seven – Localize Links

If you are signed up as an Amazon Affiliate in the US only, you are losing out on revenue. However, creating links to target each geography of your visitors used to be no easy feat. Now, many tools have made this easier and Amazon has its native One Link solution. 

Personally I have seen anywhere from a 10% to 25% lift in earnings for a site by doing this step. 

Tool

• See list under additional reading

Procedure

1. Signup to all other Amazon Affiliate programs (or check your analytics to see where you are getting meaningful traffic from)
2. Use the Amazon Affiliate link tool of your choice to customize the links – There are a lot of ways to handle this and it is best to follow the procedure of your chosen tool. See the additional reading section below for some tips based on the tool you use. 

Additional Reading

• AMALinksPro – https://amalinkspro.com/amazon-link-localization/
• AAWP – https://getaawp.com/docs/article/geo-targeting/
• GeniusLinks – https://geniuslink.com/localization
• Amazon One Link – https://affilimate.com/blog/amazon-one-link/ & https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/onelink

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Easy
• Impact – High

Eight – Use Images

Adding images to blog posts substantially increases conversions and reduces bounce rates considerably. We’ve all been there before. Anytime you load a blog post with a wall full of text, and immediately exit the page. 

This is the same reason Apple utilizes strong imagery above the fold and throughout their entire website. It substantially increases conversions and brings the company more revenue. That is why adding images throughout your website is so important, but sometimes things are easier said than done. 

Adding photos can be complicated due to licensing, photo rights, and ownership. Stock photos have a time and a place, but adding product photos while staying compliant with Amazon’s terms is complex. You are breaking their terms if you download a product photo, alter the size and upload it to your website or blog. 

With a tool like AMZ Image, you can easily add Amazon product images directly into WordPress posts and pages. The process is straightforward and will save you countless hours, increase conversions, and earn you a lot more affiliate commission. Another great thing is you won’t have to worry about getting your account banned since these tools are 100% Amazon compliant.

Tool

• AMZImage
• Other tools work as well for this including AAWP, AMALinksPro

Procedure

• Install AMZImage or other Amazon Image Plugin
• Enter your credentials

• When creating a post select Add Amazon Images

• Search and find an image you want to insert into your post and select insert 

Additional Reading

• https://fatstacksblog.com/theres-more-to-amazon-product-images-than-affiliate-commissions/

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Medium
• Impact – Medium

Nine – Create In Content Links

In content links is a significant driver of traffic and earnings to Amazon. Making sure your images, feature boxes and comparison tables on the site are great but if you don’t have any naturally occurring in-content links you will be missing out on sales. 

Tool

• Google Analytics
• Your Amazon Link Building Tool – AMA Links Pro or AAWP

Procedure

• Because this is a fairly labour intensive process to do we are going to focus on the articles where this will have the biggest impact. In the first step identify your top pages (depending on the size of your site this could be from 5-500?) 
• Go to each of those pages
• Add an affiliate link in the content sending people to Amazon where it naturally makes sense in the article. 

TIP – Provide instructions to your writers and publishers to ensure they are including natural links to Amazon in the articles where it makes sense so you don’t need to go around later and clean this up. 

Additional Reading

• Use a Amazon Affiliate Content Marketing Service familiar with placing Amazon affiliate links in your articles when they write and publish them.

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Medium
• Impact – Medium

Ten – Place Native Shopping Ads (sidebar and footer)

Amazon’s ability to create tools for its affiliates has been surprisingly poor. However, I feel with one exception and that is the Native Shopping Ads unit has proven to be a solid success. 

Typically this will be the lowest converting Amazon Links on your site and it may make sense to replace this with a featured product box. 

Tool

• https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/ads
• https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/ad-inserter/ (free)

Procedure

How to add Amazon Native Ads to WordPress…

• Install the free Ad Inserter WordPress Plugin
• Go to Amazon and create an ad unit – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/ads
• Copy the code
• Go to WordPress and the Ad Inserter
  • Follow Amazon’s Guide here to setup Native Ads with Ad Inserter

Additional Reading

• https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/topic/t405

Effort & Impact

• Effort – Low
• Impact – Medium

Summary

There you have 10 highly actionable “hacks” you can use to increase the Amazon Affiliate earnings on your site. 

My hope is that this will be actionable enough that it can act as a SOP in your site operations. 

Good luck increasing the earnings on your site!

A few weeks ago as the stay at home orders were setting in we had a discussion internally about what new problem existed that we were uniquely capable of solving. From that discussion, EssentialGoods.org was born. 

As mentioned on several earlier posts I believe there has never been a time in our lives where the rate of problem creation has been greater and if you are able to solve a problem it is needed! 

TODAY – April 28, 2020 – We are live on ProductHunt and would love your feedback. Currently, we are in the top 5 trending products for the day!

Visit Us on ProductHunt Here

To better understand EssentialGoods.org here is a video I did with Conor the developer…

What is EssentialGoods? 

EssentialGoods.org provides an SMS text alert when a product you want that was out of stock comes back in stock.

• First, if you go to Amazon to purchase some essentials (education book for your kids, bread making yeast and hair dye) – then realize they are all currently out of stock
  • You can enter a re-stock alert email from Amazon but it will be delayed
• Signup at EssentialGoods.org and either select from a pre-screened list of common essentials like masks and sanitzer or add your custom essential product
• Receive a text message as soon as the product comes back in stock to be able to purchase quickly 

Initially, it does this for Amazon but will be adding additional online stores in the coming week(s).  

Who is this for?

It is for anyone who is looking to purchase products on Amazon that are currently out of stock. 

From common essentials like masks and hand sanitizer to less common dietary favorites. 

We have seen people using it for trending products like airpods and nintendo switch. 

We decided to make it free during COVID-19 impact for those most at risk including frontline medical professionals and a free trial for everyone else. 

Who Built It & Why?

Conor the lead developer at adbank.network identified the opportunity and quickly built it. The team at ContentRefined.com helped with the research into products and the buyer guides. 

The marketing coordination was handled by the adbank marketing team and specifically Catherine. 

The entire team felt there was a need that if we could help address one small problem around the stress of finding out when a product was back in stock it would be a worthwhile activity. 

How Does it Give Back?

It was important for us to ensure that we were giving back in a meaningful way. For that reason we are doing several things with our inventory restock alert app. 

• Free for frontline medical workers
• Free for senior citizens
• Free trial for everyone
• 5% of any profits to our local hospital foundation – https://cgmhf.com/

When and How Often Does Amazon Restock Items?

The Amazon machine is constantly running unloading shipments and restocking. In addition products can be out of stock on Amazon while shipments are moving between warehouses. So products can come back into stock at any time. 

If it is an essential product sign up for an alert service like essentialgoods.org or if you are prime member and it isn’t critical then Amazon has a free inventory restock alert email. 

Can this Be Used for Popular Products?

When will Amamzon restock nintendo switch or Amazon airpods? As mentioned above this can happen at any time. 

Yes, despite essentialgoods being built for products related to COVID-19 it is being used by people to receive alerts for popular consumer products that are out of stock and sell out quickly when they are restocked, such as Nintendo Switch. 

Sometimes I believe I write a little too much about successes and don’t provide a realistic picture of all the ups/downs associated with an online business.

Today in this painful post I will shed some light on a recent failure which will ultimately cost me up to $100k!

Plus I share the process my team built to ensure this wouldn’t happen and had finished it just days getting suspended!

Also, if you have been suspended I do still have one strategy up my sleeve I can’t reveal publicly but if you have had your Amazon associate account suspended please contact me and I would be happy to share.

 

My Amazon Associate Account Has Been Suspended Again Losing $100k!

The irony… I had just hired a full time employee in house whose first job was to prepare a set of procedures for us to audit all of our Amazon associate sites and confirm we were 110% compliant!

I will share all of those procedures with you in this post and everything we have learned to help ensure you avoid getting your Amazon Associate Account suspended.

 

NOTE – IF YOU HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED PLEASE CONTACT ME – I DO HAVE ONE TRICK UP MY SLEEVE NOT REVEALED HERE PUBLICLY!

 

Want More Help?
Losing my Amazon Associate account sucked! We had just finished doing a TON of work to try and make sure we were bullet proof in terms of staying compliant with all of our sites in the eyes of Google. In order to help others I decided to make my entire audit process public so others can do their own audits or if you want help provide access to my in house project manager who studies all the TOC’s from Amazon and built the audit process.

• See the top 7 reasons why your sites might be out of compliance! – Click Here
• Have Me and My Team Audit Your Sites – Click Here
  • My new project manager read every single document from Amazon and built the audit process. She has reviewed over a dozen sites and can review your site providing images showing exactly what she recommends you change to stay compliant.

 

The story of my associate account getting suspended goes back to when I sold 2/3^rd of my FBA business.

The purchaser also purchased another site which had been associated with a suspended account and therefore when Amazon reviewed his accounts they suspended his personal account, our partnership account and then eventually (months later) my personal account.

Amazon seems to follow a policy of “guilt by association” even if there is nothing wrong with your account or sites you can receive a message saying…

“During our research, we have determined that an account belonging to you (or a person affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates.”

What was odd was that my personal account remained un-suspended for a much longer time!

 

My Strategy – Go Stealth:

With a substantial chunk of money on the table and after some unsuccessful attempts at getting any information out of Amazon I setup a plan to go very stealth in the creation of another account. My plan I thought was bullet proof! Here are the steps I took…

• New Entity
• New Address
• New Email
• New Phone Number
• New Contact Name
• 301 Redirected Website to a NEW website URL
• Logged in via a VPN I ONLY used to login to my Amazon associates account
• Used a browser, in incognito mode, I ONLY used for logging into my Amazon associated account

However, a couple months later it was shutdown with the same message… how I do not know other than they may have physically followed the URL.

To see how a very succesful Amazon Affiliate handled this problem check out Brent Hale.

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t buy a site that has been associated with a banned account
• Don’t connect someone to your account unless you absolutely have to!
• Don’t connect yourself to an account unless you absolutely have to!
• Ensure your sites are 100% compliant (easier said than done!)

 

Why This Pisses Me Off:

Other than the financial loss which will likely close at around $100k!

For every site I am trying very hard to be compliant with Amazon TOC’s, we are not doing anything sneaky and are simply trying to play by Amazon’s rules.

Amazon’s unwillingness to work with their associates/affiliates to resolve small issues drives us to take all kinds of strange actions!

 

Avoid This Pain – How to Ensure Your Amazon Associate Websites are 100% Compliant!

Like I said I hired someone full time in house to help systematize my business and had her spend a week doing the very not fun task of reading every single part of the various Terms and Conditions with Amazon associates accounts and turn it into an auditable process.

The plan was to ensure that every single one of our websites was 100% in compliant and before we could roll it out my account got suspended.

 

5 Steps I took to create an Amazon Audit Procedure for my Amazon Affiliate sites

 

1. Reading of the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement
2. Creation of the “Associate Program Requirements Form”
3. Creating a Standard Operating Procedure
4. Hiring a Virtual Assistant and Giving Great Instructions
5. Execute our Audit Procedure Yourself

 

Reading the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement

Reading the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement was probably the most challenging part of this task. You probably are not familiar with this piece of “literature”, but the Agreement is broken into about four different sections that are only accessible via a clickable in text link on the first page of the Agreement. These sections consist of the “Participation Requirements”, the “Trademark Guidelines”, the “ Linking Requirements”, and the “License Agreement”.

1. To read the Associates Program Operating Agreement click here
2. To read the Associates Program Participation Requirements click here
3. To read the Associates Program Linking Requirements click here
4. To read the Associates Program Trademark Guidelines click here

As you can see, these guidelines are not easily accessible, but if you have the time to read through the ten (10)  thousand word document of legal gibberish (took me about 7 hours to fully understand what the heck they were talking about), then your account MIGHT not get shut down.

 

Creating the “Associate Program Requirements Form”

To make sure that all of our sites were compliant, I decided that an “Audit” process should be performed on every Amazon Affiliate site by an outsourced Virtual Assistant (VA). After I read through the Operating Agreement and felt confident enough with the legal content, I starting building an Audit questionnaire based on these Requirements. I wanted to make sure that the questions were asked in a clear and simple way so that someone with little knowledge of Amazon Affiliate sites could understand and answer these questions accurately. The questionnaire allows you to also insert some images so that you can help guide the Virtual Assistant on where they can find certain website elements.

See example here:

 

I used Google Forms because I like that the form produces a Google Sheet where I can view all of the Audit Responses. I standardized the questions on the questionnaire so that if the Auditor had to answer “Yes”, it would mean that the question failed the Audit. This way, If I take a quick look at the responses, I’m able to see immediately which sites needed the most work based on how many “Yes” responses I got.

Creating a Standard Operating Procedure for the company

Since we have about 70+ sites, I knew this would be a gruelling task so I decided to create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which would allow me to outsource this work to a Virtual Assistant.

The SOP essentially provides a step by step guide and a clear process for all actions taken by the VA while executing the audit on our affiliate sites. The SOP also provides a clear process for how to remedy breaches of Amazon’s Terms and Conditions which, if done properly, will result in a compliant site. Check out the table below which shows the 15 steps we take to Audit and then make any necessary changes to make our sites compliant.

Action By:	Step:	Action:
Virtual Assistant	1	The VA must go to the Master List of Amazon Affiliate Sites
Virtual Assistant	2	The VA must select a URL and go to the site
Virtual Assistant	3	Once on the site, the VA must open the Associate’s Program Requirements Form and answer all questions
Virtual Assistant	4	If YES has been selected on the Form for any question, the VA must make corrective changes to the site for that question
Virtual Assistant	5	If the VA is unable to make corrective changes because the changes are Out of Scope, the VA must notify the Portfolio Manager
Portfolio Manager	6	The Portfolio Manager must review Out of Scope changes in conjunction with the site and create instructions for the WordPress VA
Portfolio Manager	7	Once the instructions are complete, the Portfolio Manager must send the instructions to the WordPress VA
WordPress VA	10	WordPress VA to implement all remaining  Out of Scope changes and alert Portfolio Manager of changes
Portfolio Manager	11	Portfolio Manager to inform VA of changes and instruct a Re-Test
VA	12	VA to re-test the site to ensure that all questions can be answered NO in compliance with Amazon’s Terms and Conditions
VA	13	VA to report status and completion of audit process to Portfolio Manager
Portfolio Manager	14	Portfolio Manager to look over all approved sites to confirm approved status
Portfolio Manager	15	Portfolio Manager to collect and reporting on status of progress and completion of Audit for each Amazon Affiliate site to the CEO

 

Hiring a Virtual Assistant ( VA) and Giving Great Instructions  

If you read my blog regularly, you might have read my post about hiring a VA. You can find it here if you want to read in depth.

What I like to do is hire a few VA’s via Upwork, give them a test (or in this case a site to audit) and see how they do. Since I want the VA to have the ability to not only find the issues on the site, but also to fix them, I’m going to look for a VA who has experience with wordpress sites.

Two things I like to look for is speed and quality. I can generally get a fast VA who outputs good quality work within a few hires. Once you find a great VA, send them lots and lots of work and great instructions!

Giving great instructions to the VA is absolutely necessary if you want them to produce the desired outcome. I have an instructions template that is specific to the Amazon process. If is broken up into 4 sections.

1. The Purpose: Here I explain WHY the job needs to get done by providing a blurb about the purpose they are serving by executing this job.
2. Responsibilities: Here I explain WHO is responsible and WHAT the responsibilities are
3. Procedure: Here I explain HOW to execute the procedure step by step. I have included this 15 step procedure above.
4. Table: Here is where I ask the VA to fill out the table if they have answered YES to any of the questions on the form

Example:

Login credentials for the wordpress site

• Login:
• Username:
• Password:

Question number (#):	Question: (Copy and paste from form)	Why did you answer yes? (Short explanation)
#
#	Screenshot of BEFORE change:	Screenshot of AFTER change:
#

 

Use My Audit Process & Don’t Get Your Account Suspended!

If you want to use my audit process for your own sites, click the google doc link below and make a copy of it in Google to have your own copy with your own spreadsheet:

Associates Program Requirements From for the Public:

• Google Form – https://goo.gl/forms/Y2u7f8QJbyROmxpH2
• Google Sheet (create your own copy) – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fRv1dbmk1_2GMz9AGJNqJdwXPxg33CLVySWHoBo1AUE/edit#gid=0 

 

Don’t have time? Let us Audit your site for you: Contact me if you would like my team to Audit your Amazon Affiliate site for you.