How to start an Amazon Affiliate Store in 2025

I’ve created many e-commerce stores over the past few years for clients who wanted to start an affiliate online store and earn commission from their sales, rather than buying stock products and risk not selling them. Starting and setting up an affiliate store is always very easy, and it should only take you a few minutes to get started.

Unlike traditional online stores or even those we prefer dropshipping or even print on demand options, affiliate marketing is way less costly, doesn’t require from you to buy products, and you there are thousands of available affiliate programs that you can join. In addition, you can promote psychical or digital products, print on demand websites, and even online services. Some affiliate programs only pay once a purchase has been completed through your website, and others may pay something extra for each lead you send them.

Most of the times, an affiliate store won’t break your budget, as you can usually start one with less than $100 bucks. And no, you don’t have to have any previous experience building e-commerce stores and you’re certainly not going to be learning any coding.

Do your research and select a profitable niche

Let’s start from the very basics: You need to do a well-informed research before starting your own Amazon affiliate store, starting by looking what are the most people is looking for. In affiliate marketing, some product categories may have even higher commission per sale, while others are lower one, based on various factors.

You can start by looking at the Amazon’s Trending products sections, and look for each product, category, and anything that has good reviews and people are constantly buying it. Usually, the most sales the better chances of earning, while other times you may find “golden” products that have even higher opportunities of getting promoted and they’re sold easier. You can also use Google Trends to find out what most people search in Google and which products have the highest volume.

Like any other affiliate program, Amazon has some fixed commission income rates for each of its categories, with some paying a higher commission per sale. Thankfully, the company provides some tables with all the information that you’ll need.

Fixed Standard Commission Income Rates for Specific Product Categories:

Before choosing a niche, head over to Amazon’s Operating Agreement Support page to see if there’s a change, and what how you can earn even more money with their bounty events, video channel subscriptions, video channels for paid memberships, and from their trade-in program (with the latter being available only for USA-based users).

Choose a platform to setup your Amazon Affiliate Store

Nowadays is fairly easy to choose a platform and build an e-commerce store without any previous knowledge. There’s no need to be an advanced user or knowing any programming languages. Actually, you can simply sign up, choose a plan, select a beautiful theme/template, and start uploading your affiliate products. That’s it!

Most people choose to start their e-commerce store using all-in-one platforms, including Shopify and Squarespace, which are two of the most popular choices right now. Both are easy to use, they let you start building your store without paying anything in advance, and once you ready, you can choose a plan and publish your affiliate store. Simply put, you just sign up for an account and start building your new website, and both of them provide insightful information for anything you may need.

If you want to build something more complex, with even more themes/templates and many options and features, there’s nothing better than WordPress. You can easily get a very cheap plan from web hosting providers such as Hostinger, BlueHost, or Namecheap, get a good premium theme for marketplaces like ThemeForest, and start building your new affiliate store within minutes. The whole process is mostly automatic, and once you setup everything, you’ll only need to go to Plugins -> Add New -> WooCommerce and click on “Install” and then “Activate“.

When it comes to the king of dropshipping and affiliate stores, Shopify is the clear winner here, with Squarespace coming a close second. It all depends on which platform you like the most, your budget, and your taste in web design, as both provide different themes that you can use and customize in your new Amazon affiliate store.

• If you go with Shopify, currently there cheapest plan starts at €24,00 per month, billed annually.
• If you decide to go with Squarespace, their cheapest plan that lets you sell products online starts either from €24,00 per month (billed monthly) or €17,00 per month (billed annually).
• For WordPress and WooCommerce lovers, a cheap plan from a hosting provider will cost you less than $100 for the whole year, with a domain name of your choice included.

WordPress and WooCommerce lets you create a more complex affiliate store with way too many options, and there are thousands of free and premium themes that you can get and customize in various ways. There are also many free Amazon affiliate plugins that you can use to make your life easier, and even the WP All Import plugin that lets you upload thousands of products automatically (especially useful if you’re using an affiliate program that gives you all its products in an CVS or XML format).

Sign up in the Amazon Associates Program

The first thing you’ll have to do is sign up for an Amazon Associates Program account. You can do that pretty quickly and it’s totally free. It may take up to 24 hours until the company sees and accept your submission, and they usually accept new users fairly easily. Do keep in mind that this is the place where you’ll find everything, from your affiliate’s account information, resources, payment options to tracking your performance and sales.

Make sure that you’ve entered your tax and contact details, as those are important if you want to keep your account active and get paid. Go to the “Edit Your Website Information” section in Associates Central to update the list of sites used to drive traffic to Amazon, including new social accounts, blogs, podcast channels, and each place that you’re using.

Once you join and sign in to your account (watch out for an email telling you that you have accepted or rejected), this where you’ll find all the options that you’ll need for your new Amazon affiliate store. You can head over to the “Promotions” page if you want to see all the new offers, while in the “Amazon Promo Codes” you can find coupon codes that you can share with your audience.

How to get the affiliate link from each Amazon product

First things first, make sure that all your information in your account are current and that you added your website’s URL. That’s needed if you want to be able to earn commission. Once done, stay signed in to your Amazon Associates Program account and simply open a new browser window and visit Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, and whichever version works best for you and your audience.

You should see a top bar that lets you copy the affiliate link from each Amazon product that you’re visiting, and you can either get the short link or the traditional link (depending on where you’re posting it). Each time that you visiting another product, that link will automatically change with the product’s unique affiliate link, and you can copy as many as you want.

All platforms have an option to add an affiliate product that redirects visitors to a third-party website instead of buying them through your website, so make sure to add this affiliate link inside that field. You can take as many products as you’d like, and if you’re an approved Amazon associate, you can also use Amazon’s images, titles, and descriptions – as long as you credit the company and you do not alter any of its original content.

Keep in mind that people who create high-quality and unique content tend to drive more traffic and generate more sales from their websites, and that includes writing your own descriptions and maybe altering the titles for better SEO purposes. In any case, try to avoid using anything that’s AI-generated because it may actually harm your website’s rankings in search results – and if do, make sure to adjust it accordingly.

Start publishing your first Amazon affiliate products

Creating, managing, and publishing products in your affiliate store is as easy as creating a new post on your social media accounts. It’s all about adding a title, a short and long description, pictures, and your affiliate link that will redirect visitors to Amazon. You can, of course, add more information or ways to showcase these products, including videos or 360° panoramic images, but you wont find that for all the products – usually the most popular ones contain them.

There’s also a huge debate about using the same information that you find on Amazon. For example, when it comes to search engines such as Google and Bing, using unique and high-quality descriptions, attributes, and images is pretty much one of the most important things. You can use many AI chatbots to help you generate those descriptions, including ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, or even Google’s Gemini, just make sure to adjust them accordingly.

Suppose you happen to have any of those products in your home: In that case, you can create even higher quality for those products as you can take your own images and videos and upload them – it’s important to keep in mind that people nowadays are looking for personal reviews and experiences, not the same old same that we used seeing on so many dropshipping and affiliate websites.

Expand your Amazon affiliate store with even more affiliate programs

Amazon is one of the best choices when it comes to getting thousands of affiliate products from a place that most people already know. But as with anything, many people already have an account and they already using the store to get products, so expanding your affiliate store with even more products from other companies usually tends to bring even more income.

Good news? You don’t have to search for each online store that may provide an affiliate program. Nowadays there are many affiliate platforms that let you sign up for an account and, once you get verified, they’ll give you a list with tons of online stores that let you promote their products or services and earn money from commissions, exactly as it happens with Amazon.

Here are some of the best affiliate platforms that you can use to expand your online store even further:

There are many other affiliate platforms that give you access to lists with various advertisers, and you can even find exclusive affiliate programs from companies that only accept specific e-commerce stores to promote their products. Keep in mind that most of those advertisers will firstly check your online store, and if they find it accurate for promoting their brand through it, they’ll accept you (or decline your submission).

Have you started your own affiliate store in 2025? If not, what’s keeping you from starting, and do you have any questions? If you already made an affiliate store, how is your experience as of now and did you face any issues during your journey? Let me know in the comments down below.