NOTE: Please read the update post here for important information about the restrictions of the affiliate program.
I mentioned the Amazon Affiliates fundraising idea in “Adopt Without Debt” almost as a side note. I knew a couple people who had done it and made a few hundred dollars. And money is money, right?
But now I’m telling you, this idea REALLY works! Stacy and Rodney have gone gangbusters with this idea and already made $1,400 for their adoption fund. Their friends and family have used their Amazon affiliate link to purchase over $20k worth of merchandise.
I have a quick link in my Safari bookmark bar that says “Amazon-Kennedy”. Every time I need something on Amazon I use the link. I don’t want to know how much of that $20k I’m responsible for personally 🙂
This is a NO-BRAINER! After you have it set up all you need to do is advertise it and remind people. Here’s a couple ideas:
- Post it on your Facebook profile and then post to FB at least once a week. (Once Stacy posted some of the unusual stuff people had purchased – they can’t see who purchased it. That was kind of fun.)
- Tweet it, of course
- Put it in the sidebar of your blog
- Send an email to friends and family with the link. Encourage them to add it as a quick link in their browser.
- Stacy sent her Christmas cards out before Thanksgiving with some cute cards with their link. GENIUS!
So that you don’t have ANY excuses, I’m even going to walk you through the set up process.
1. Go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
2. Click the “Join Now for Free” button.
3. Sign in to your regular Amazon.com account. If you don’t have one click “I’m a new customer.”
4. Verify your account information – mainly where payment should be sent.
5. Tell Amazon about your website. This form is pretty self-explanatory and don’t worry. Most of the answers are just for their research purposes. (You can click on the images below to enlarge if you have questions.)
If you don’t have a blog, don’t worry. I tested it with just putting my Facebook unique URL in the “name of your website” link and it worked fine.
6. Next you’ll get a page with your unique Amazon ID. It’ll look weird like “httpwwwfa0f8d-XX”. Click the “Specify Payment Information” button.
7. Fill out the form. Tax Name is just going to be your name as it appears on your taxes. Tax ID Number is your social security number. Yes, this counts as income and you will need to report it on your taxes. Under “Organization” select Individual. Then select your payment method. Direct deposit makes the most sense as they don’t charge you a fee. If you select that it will expand and you will need your bank account information.
Congrats, now you’ll get to your Amazon Associates “dashboard”. There’s all kinds of information on how to link to specific products and embed stuff into posts. It’s great if you want to dig in to it (and if you frequently mention books I would). But for now you don’t need to bother with it.
8. Go back to Amazon.com. Now you’ll notice the “affiliates” grey bar at the top of your browser window.
9. Click the “Link to this page” (while you’re on the home page). You’ll get this pop-up box. Note the text I highlighted below in between the quote marks. Copy just that portion. That is your affiliate link. Of course that’s super long and not very user-friendly but hang on.
1o. Next we’re going to get a shortened URL. There’s a number of services you can use – bit.ly etc. TinyURL is an easy one. Go to TinyURL.com and paste that link into the box that says “Enter a long URL to make tiny” then click the “make tiny” button.
You’ll get something like this
Copy the tiny url and use it in Tweets, FB, etc. Paste it into a text document on your desktop or something for easy reference.
For printing business cards: Vistaprint.com offers 250 free business cards you could use to make up some cards to hand out to friends.
What other “affiliate” programs are you using to raise funds for your adoption?
mhrn97 says
Thank you so much for this! I know this was alot of work to put together! My cousin and I are hoping to adopt either from fostercare, domestic, or china so I shared this post with her too!!!
Julie Gumm says
Your quite welcome! Glad you found it useful.
Kaori Chu Krady says
Super bummer they won’t let NC residents to participate!
Katie Kaufman says
Thanks so much for this post! Once the set up is done, this is such an easy fundraiser! I just post the link periodically on FB!
Julie Gumm says
I’m glad it helped. I hope you have great success with it!
Mark Watkins says
DISAPPOINTED! From Amazon – “Residents of Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina or Rhode
Island are not eligible to participate in the Associates program.” I couldn’t find a reason, but this is very disappointing!
Julie Gumm says
Unfortunately it has to do with states making Amazon charges state sales tax. Amazon is only required to charge state taxes in states where they have a presence. But some states are trying to say that affiliates count and are going after Amazon for state sales tax. Unfortunately, Amazon’s answer has been to pre-emptively terminate affiliate programs in those states. Here’s an article that talks about it. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20070808-93/amazon-cuts-affiliate-ties-in-more-states-over-taxes/
Kathryn says
I’ve done this, but it seems like I’m only receiving credit when I am linking to a specific product, and someone buys that product. I’m not even getting credit when they purchase other items. This is getting to be a bit disappointing, and I can’t figure out how to get it to work like you’ve described in your blog & book. :/
Julie Gumm says
Are you doing step #9 while on the home page of Amazon?
Dani says
I LOVED this idea when you talked about it at Summit 9 (you were awesome, by the way) because my in-laws use Amazon like it’s water. But I learned recently that by becoming an affiliate you are signing a contract saying that you can’t ask people to use your link. Rigging the system or something like that. Do you know anything about that? I would love to do this but don’t want it to come back and bite me either.
Joanne says
Did you ever find out about how to advertise your link without specifically asking people to use your link?
Julie says
Here’s the update. http://juliegumm.com/2013/08/update-on-using-amazon-affiliates-for-adoption-fundraising/