If you’re new to Amazon ads, I bet you’re excited to get started! But inserting them into a post doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people. So here’s an easy-to-follow guide on how to use Amazon ads into your post, and which types of ads work best.

To skip to the part of the guide you need, click on the links below. Though reading the whole post would be pretty cool of you.

• Becoming an Amazon Associate
• What Types of Ads are Best?
• How to Insert a Text Ad
• How to Insert an Image Ad
• Be Careful of These Things
• How to Make Ads No-Follow
• Staying Within the Law
• Similar Posts

The Ultimate Guide for How to Use Amazon Ads

Becoming an Amazon Associate

The first step to making money off of Amazon is to actually apply! They can’t pay you if they don’t know it’s you who’s recommending products, after all.

To apply, follow these steps:

1. Go to their Become an Affiliate page.
2. Log in to your account and join for free.
3. Follow the instructions they send you.

You will have to do a trial run–they want the ads put on your blog before they approve you.

Due to state tax laws, you cannot join Amazon Associates if you live in Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi, Maine, Rhode Island, or Vermont.

Once you’re an affiliate, you’ll need to put a disclaimer on your blog. The specific one they want you to use (but they make sure to hide it because why not?) is this:

“__________ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.”

That disclaimer is here under, “10. Identifying Yourself as an Associate.”

Lots of people get kicked out (and lose all the money they’ve made) by not having that on their blog. So make sure you’re using it!

On to the ads!

What types of ads are best?

Not all ads are created equal, and not all readers respond to ads in the same way.

Ever had a video start playing and asked, “Why do websites use these ads!? They’re annoying! I’ll never buy anything from them!” A lot of people feel that way. Which is odd, because the reason websites use those ads is because they generate the most money. This tells me there is a disconnect between how people think about ads and how people interact with ads.

My point: marketing is weird. Good luck.

The best way to know which type of ads will work best on your site is to experiment with them all. But that takes a lot of time and patience. And your answer is probably going to be, “A healthy mix of each.”

Image ads are good for the following reasons:

• They break up huge chunks of text, making your blog easier to read. Though I recommend adding, “Scroll to keep reading” right before a large image ad. Especially if a lot of your traffic is on mobile. Sometimes an ad can make it seem like the post just abruptly ended.
• They’re attractive.
• They’re attention-grabbing. This is great for things like social media, where images catch peoples’ eyes better than text.

There is a reason businesses pay so much for sponsored posts. People value other people’s experiences.

Posting your own photos of a product you use and then linking to the text ad is more valuable than a generic image ad. In those cases, text ads are best. This is how I prefer to run my Amazon ads. In fact, I make next to nothing off of banner ads. All my Amazon money comes from text ads.

But different audiences react to ads in different ways, so test it and see what works best for you.

How to Insert a Text Ad

1. Sign into your Amazon Associates account. This will take you to your Associate’s account information. So once you’re signed in, go back to Amazon.com.

2. Search for the product you want to promote. As an example, I chose a Hermetic Seal Glass Pitcher with Lid and Spout.

3. At the top of your product is the Amazon Associates Stripe. It has a section that says, “Get Link.” Click on, “Text.”

4. Highlight and copy that link. Go to your blog post. Highlight the text you want to link to the product.

5. Click on, “Link” on the page where you’re writing your blog post. This will look different depending on what you use to write your blog. In the WordPress visual editor, it’s a chain link that is not broken. In the text editor, it says, “Link.”

6. Paste the link into the URL bar. Then click, “Add link.”

Done!

How to Insert an Image Ad

1. Sign into your Amazon Associates account. This will take you to your Associate’s account information. So once you’re signed in, go back to Amazon.com.

2. Search for the product you want to promote. As an example, I chose a Hermetic Seal Glass Pitcher with Lid and Spout.

3. At the top of your product is the Amazon Associates Stripe. It has a section that says, “Get Link.” Click on, “Image.”

4. Choose the size you want. Then highlight and copy that code. If you’re in the WordPress Visual Editor, make sure you change it to the Text Editor. You do this by finding the tabs at the top of your text box and clicking, “Text.”

5. Find the area where you want the ad to sit. Paste the code there.

The highlighted part is my code.

6. Return to the visual editor to see how it looks, and to change the alignment if necessary.

Done!

Be careful of these things

There has been some confusion about how to phrase your disclaimer for Amazon ads. Amazon is very strict about anything that sounds like an incentive.

For instance, you are free to donate all Amazon Associates proceeds to charity. Once you have the money, it is yours and you can do what you want with it. But if you say, “Please buy this product through my link. All proceeds go to charity, so it’s for a good cause!” Amazon views that as an incentive. Which means they could shut down your account and you won’t receive your money.

Amazon does not want to be responsible if it turns out someone is lying about where the money is going.

To be safe, stick to a disclaimer like, “This post contains affiliate links. I will make a commission on any product you buy through those links at no extra charge to you.”

You are also not allowed to buy things through your own Amazon ID. This goes against their Terms of Service and will get your kicked out of the program. If you do it by accident, don’t freak out. I have done it by accident before and they removed the credits from my account. Be careful not to do too many times.

How to Make Ads No-Follow

Google penalizes both your blog and the business you linked to if you don’t use nofollow tags.

To insert nofollow tags, you have two options: HTML or plugins.

Using HTML

Click on the “Text” tab when editing your entries, look for the HTML code, and all rel=”nofollow” to it. Like this:

<a href=”http://URL HERE” rel=”nofollow”>TEXT HERE</a>

Using a Plugin

If you don’t like HTML, or you find that it’s too tedious (LIKE I DO!), you can use a plugin called Ultimate Nofollow. When you insert a link, it will show up as a checkbox, like this:

No matter which method you choose, that nofollow tag tells Google’s bots not to scan the link.

Staying within the law

Under the CAN-SPAM Act, you must not post affiliate links within an email. That include emails that get sent via your RSS feed. If you want to post text links, then you need to set your emails to only include an excerpt. Rather than the whole post.

You also need a disclosure statement on each post that contains affiliate links. With Amazon, it’s best if your statement has the disclosure I mentioned earlier. Which was:

“__________ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.”

I usually use a generic message that says, “This post contains affiliate links. I will make a small commission from anything you buy.” And I link to my full Disclosure Statement page.

This statement must also be above the post. For a long time, the FTC allowed us to keep our disclosure statements at the bottom of the post. This changed a few years ago and now the FTC requires the statement to come before the affiliate links. It also

It also cannot be in the sidebar and it must not be in a place that is easy to miss. This means you should avoid making it an image or button, because sometimes images fail to load. It also need to show up on mobile.

For more information on the FTC, I recommend reading:

•  Are You Disclosing Properly in Your Posts?
• New FTC Rules
• The FTC Clarifies Their Rules for Bloggers.

I also include a link to my own Disclosure Statement, which you are more than welcome to use as a template.

If you have any questions about how to use Amazon ads, leave them in the comments!