Here’s a Quick Way to Make Money on Amazon

I’ve been using the Amazon Affiliates program when linking products on this site for a year or so. Basically, every time you link to a product on Amazon they give you a percentage of the sales if someone ends up buying a product you referred. It’s not going to pay your bills, but it gives you some coin for doing something most bloggers do all the time: Link products.

Amazon just took their affiliate program to another level by adding Twitter integration. Yes. Now you can share links from products you find useful with your tweeps and make a little coin on the side. It’s a win-win.

Want to give it a try? It’s easy.

1. First you need to sign up as an affiliate.

To do this, go to Amazon and look in the upper right-hand corner. You should see a little “Amazon associates” link that looks like this:

Click on it (or you can just click this link) and go through the quick sign-up process. After you sign up, you’ll be given an individual “affiliate ID” that’s unique to you. It shows Amazon who you’re referring and what they buy.

There’s a lot you can do with the options on the other side of the sign-up, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll focus on the Twitter integration.

2. Find a product you like.

For demonstration purposes, I’m going to pick the latest album from Discovery, “LP” (and yes, this is linked to my affiliate ID). After you’ve signed in as an affiliate, you find the page of the product you want and click on the “share on Twitter” button on the affiliate “stripe.”

This will open up a new link that will take you to Twitter. Which brings us to the next step…

3. Share it on Twitter.

The hard part’s over. Amazon built a script that allows you to share the link of the product you chose with you affiliate ID already built-in. Alter the message as you see fit and share it with your tweeps.

Done and done. Hopefully someone will find it useful and “buy what you’re sellin’!”

A few tips in closing …

Don’t be “that guy/girl.” Share stuff that you truly find useful or exciting. Spamming your Twitter friends with useless junk will get you unfollowed faster than sending an auto-reply DM.

This new feature from Amazon can be a great way to let people know what you’re buying while making some cash on the side. Sign-up, have fun and make that dough!