In this post, I am going to be showing you step by step how to add affiliate links for Amazon and other affiliate programs to your blog posts.

This blog tutorial comes directly from my course, Content Creation Blueprint This self-paced course provides step-by-step video training to create content that converts into more followers and sales!

If you are new to affiliate marketing check out this post and video on getting started with affiliate marketing and the best affiliate marketing programs for bloggers. 

This post may contain affiliate links.  Please see my disclosure page for more info

Amazon Associates is the first affiliate program that I worked with and is one I still recommend to those just getting started with affiliate marketing.

While it doesn’t have huge commissions, it’s a great way to dip your toes into the affiliate marketing space, get experience, and see results.

The majority of people shop at Amazon. There is something for you to recommend to your audience no matter what your niche, so it’s an easy way to start making a few dollars here and there.

There are truly endless products to recommend

If you blog about crocheting, you can recommend specific yarn or crochet needles. Have a baking blog? You can link to specific ingredients you use in your recipes. If you blog about parenting a child with special needs you can link to specific therapy tools, toys or books you use and the list goes on and on.

One of the biggest perks of this program is that no matter what you link to, you get a commission on anything the person buys through your link. This is applicable for a 24-hour cookie window.

This means that if a person clicked on your link for a specific book on Amazon and instead ended up buying a laptop and a camera you still get the commission for those things!!

If you want to make more income with Amazon, you can focus on higher fixed commissions with bounties– which are trials and/or sign-ups to specific programs like Audible, Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited, and Amazon Baby Registry.

These are definitely worth looking into if any of these fit in with your niche. I believe as of now they give commissions of $3-$10 per sign-up depending on the bounty.

One more important thing to know about the Amazon Associates program– it requires you to make a sale within your first 90 days to stay in the program, so make sure that your blog is generating some traffic before applying.

How to add affiliate links for Amazon to your WordPress blog post

Step 1- Log into your WordPress dashboard.

You can do this by typing in your domain followed by a forward slash and the word admin. (I.E. mydomain.com/admin) or you can log in directly through your hosting provider.

Step 2 – Create a new blog post or edit an existing blog post.

From here you will either need to:

• Open up the blog post where you want to add your affiliate links for Amazon or another affiliate program

• Or if you are starting from scratch create a new blog post from your WordPress dashboard

As always I recommend writing your blog posts within your default WordPress block editor (Gutenberg), not your page builder.

Page builders like Divi or Elementor are great for creating pages and amazing features on your site, but they don’t work well for blog posts.

For your actual blog posts, you want to be writing them in your default editor. I have found this works so much better for formatting your posts, mobile responsiveness, and helping with your SEO.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to be adding affiliate links for Amazon to one of my existing blog posts, so I would click ‘Edit’ not ‘Edit with Divi Builder.’

Step 3: Highlight the text where you want to create a link

Scroll to the place where you want to insert one of your affiliate links and highlight the text by dragging your mouse over it.

In this graphic, I am highlighting a book (Atomic Habits) that I am going to link to Amazon.

Step 4: Adding in the link

There are two ways you can access your links.

1. 1.  You can log in to your Amazon Associates account and add links by entering the name of the product in the search bar.  From here you will get a list of results with a gold “Get link” buttons on the right-hand side.

2. Once you apply and are approved for Amazon Associates you can set up Amazon Stripe in your account settings section.

Amazon Stripe allows you to create links directly from the Amazon.com site without having to visit the main central hub each time.  Then any time you do a search, you can link to it from a bar on your browser as shown below.

I pretty much always choose the text version of the link, but you can decide what you like best. (Refer to timestamp- 9 minutes and 50 seconds into the above video)

Then go back to your site and above the highlighted link you will see a link symbol (paperclip). Click that and paste in your link.

Select “Open in new tab.” This allows the link to open a new window, so they can still continue reading your blog post after they click on it.

You also want to select “Search Engines should ignore this link.” Refer to the video at 5 minutes & 15 seconds for more info on why this is necessary with affiliate links.

Then click on the link address to add it. If you don’t click the URL at the end, it won’t add it.

If the link is added correctly, the highlighted text will change color as shown in the graphic below.

Adding affiliate links from other affiliate programs

Each affiliate program’s links and backend dashboard will look a little bit different, but you add them to your blog posts the same way.

For every affiliate program, you will be given a specific link that is unique to you. And this link will be tracked and reported to your dashboard when a sale is made!

As you grow, I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet of all the different affiliate programs you’re part of with your personal links to each. This way you don’t have to log in to the program each time that you want to add an affiliate link.

Depending on the affiliate program you are working with, you may be able to cloak your links to something easier to remember when you’re sharing them. I teach my students how to do this with the plug-in Pretty Links.

Important: Amazon does not allow you to cloak their links with Pretty Links, but you can with many other programs. Just check each of your affiliate program policies regarding this before doing so.

Adding affiliate banners to blog posts

Check out the video at the beginning of this post (At timestamp- 7 minutes and 38 seconds) for step-by-step instruction on how to add affiliate banners to your site.

How to check to make sure your affiliate link works in your blog post

As I mentioned above, if the link was added correctly, the highlighted text will change color

Another way that you can check to make sure your affiliate marketing links are working is to preview them in a new tab.

Go to the top right-hand corner of your draft and click ‘Preview.‘ Then choose ‘Preview in new tab.’

This opens a new window to show you exactly how your blog post will look when it is published. It will also allow you to check your links to make sure they link to the correct place and are opening in a separate window.

How to add affiliate links for Amazon and other programs – Recap

You should now know exactly how to add affiliate links for Amazon and other programs to your blog posts.

Sign up for a few affiliate programs and start adding your links to your blog posts as shown in this post so you can have a new stream of income coming into your blogging business as you grow!

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out my blog post and video on my recommendations for the best affiliate marketing programs for bloggers.