Amazon Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria – the Ultimate Guide

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money by promoting other people’s products or services. It is a powerful business model which you can achieve using a platform where you have an audience that may be interested in the products you’re promoting. We have the answers right here if you want to know all about Amazon Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria.

Affiliate marketing is simple enough to understand. When you promote a product, the promoter is the affiliate, and you promote products using a special link called an affiliate link. Whenever someone clicks on the affiliate link and buys the product or service, the affiliate is paid a commission.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that it could become a source of passive income for the affiliate. This means the affiliate makes money anytime, even when the affiliate is sleeping. This is what makes affiliate marketing powerful.

So how can you profitably engage in Amazon Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria? Read on to find out more.

Why Amazon for affiliate marketing?

Amazon is the biggest eCommerce platform on the planet. It beats Aliexpress, Wish, Best Buy, Walmart, and others. Amazon offers a well-organized affiliate program, called Amazon Associates.

Secondly, Amazon has a high reputation in the eCommerce space. This means that people trust the company and will easily spend money to buy Amazon products.

Thirdly, it is free to join Amazon Associates. Anyone can register for free, provided you have a means of promoting their products legitimately.

The only major downside is that Amazon pays low commissions. However, this is not really an issue because if you know what you’re doing, the money can quickly add up to a reasonable amount. There are affiliates making tens of thousands of dollars every month from Amazon Associates.

Another downside is the fact that you can only access the money you made in the current month after 2 months. This is Amazon’s policy which they put in place to make sure that customers can return products they don’t like within that period of time.

All in all, the Amazon affiliate program is a great program to earn money as an affiliate.

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How can you promote Amazon products?

There are many ways to do this. The major ones are –

1. Through a blog or content website
2. Through a YouTube channel
3. Using email marketing

In this article, we will focus on the first option, through a blog or content website. Normally, you should build your content website, grow it and get reasonable traffic before applying for Amazon Associates.

How to build your blog or content website for Amazon Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria

This is where the bulk of the work lies. However, just follow along and you will not miss your way. Here’s a checklist to follow.

1. Choose a niche
2. Validate your niche
3. Carry out keyword research
4. Register a domain name and buy hosting
5. Set up your website
6. Set up Analytics and add the website to Google Search Console
7. Write at least 50 – 100 articles
8. Build backlinks
9. Continue publishing high-quality articles that will rank on Google
10. Apply for Amazon Associates
11. Sign up for Payoneer and a dollar account
12. Publish regularly
13. Monetize using on-page advertising

Amazon Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria step by step

Follow these steps in the order outlined here. If you do, you’ll be successful. Remember, this is a long-term business model. It’s not a get-rich-quick business. Take your time, go through this guide again and again until you understand what we are saying. Then act if you feel this is for you.

Choose a niche

A niche is an area of interest. In other words, this is like a topic that your website is going to be built around.

In order to succeed with affiliate marketing, you must choose a relevant niche, and also one that will be profitable. You must also have some interest in that particular niche. In other words, the niche is one which you have some passion for.

For instance, if you have a dog and you love dogs, you can choose a dog niche or a sub-niche within the dog niche. An example of a dog niche is DOGS RE US. The website domain name would look like this dogsreus.com.

For a sub-niche, the website would bear the name ALSATIAN HELPER, while the domain will look like this, alsatianhelper.com. Get the picture?

If your website is not a niche website, then you have fewer chances of succeeding. Don’t make that mistake. Build your website around a topic that will always provide answers to the questions or information people are looking for.

Also, build around a topic that is not too small for you to write a reasonable amount of articles. For instance, don’t choose a niche such as Dog Collars. If you start writing articles, you will soon run out of topics to write on. But a niche like Alsatian Dogs will provide you with enough topics to write on. Do you understand this?

Don’t forget that Google is literally the master of the internet. Google loves niche websites. The bulk of internet searches is made on Google. Therefore, it is wise to create a website that Google will love to recommend to searchers. The key is to build around a niche. We’ll discuss how Google ranks articles in depth further down. Keep reading.

Validate your niche

Now that you have chosen the right niche, it’s time to validate the niche. What we mean by niche validation is to find out whether your niche is profitable. In other words, whether there is enough interest in that niche all year round.

The best tool for this phase of research is Google Trends – www.trends.google.com. This is a website that helps marketers to determine the level of search interest in any keyword for any part of the world. The data is pulled from Google searches.

This is a very reliable tool because you just can’t get it wrong if you validate your niche with Google Trends. When you are using Google Trends for validation, there are 2 things to look out for, which are niche seasonality and interest over time.

A seasonal niche is one that has high interest for a period of time in the year. A good example is Halloween or Thanksgiving.

The interest in a niche is shown in Google Trends as a graph that allows you to narrow down data to specific countries over a period of time. It could be 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, or up to 10 years. That’s a lot of useful data to help you with your research.

In a nutshell, choose a niche without seasonality, and which has high interest at least for the main part of the year. A good example is the dog niche which I mentioned earlier. Another good example is cars, kitchen tools, etc.

Carry out keyword research

This is the process of finding profitable keywords from Google search data. In other words, you have to find out the keywords people are searching for on Google and use those keywords for article writing.

A keyword or keyphrase is a search phrase that someone types into the Google search form for answers.

For example, how to make money online in Nigeria is a keyphrase. Google has the information on how many people type that keyphrase in a month, over the years.

Your job is to find out whether people are searching for a keyphrase, and the average number of searches in a month. That’s what keyword research enables you to find out.

The 2 key indices here are competition and search volume. Competition is a measure of how easy it is to rank on Google for any keyphrase, while search volume is the average number of searches in a month.

Different keyword research tools use a scale of 0-100 to rank keyword competitiveness. This is not a perfect scale, but it gives you an idea of how to access keyword competitiveness.

There’s a relationship between search volume and competition. The higher the search volume, the higher the competition. This can be represented as a graph.

From the graph above, you can see that the competition of a keyword increases with increasing search volume. What this means is that high search volume keywords have very high competition.

In other words, your article will likely appear on the first page of Google for a low competition keyword, let’s say between 10 – 20, than if it were for a high competition keyword. A keyword competition score of between 0-25 is ideal. Anything more than this is not feasible.

The best strategy is to build your content around low competition, long-tail keywords.

An example of a long-tail keyword is the best flashlight for beginner photographers in 2022. Any article built around this keyword is more likely to appear on the 1^st page, than if the article was written around a keyword like best flashlights for photography.

Keyword Research Tools

There are different keyword research tools. Some are paid while some are free. The major ones include Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, Long Tail Pro, and KW Finder.

The free ones include Keyword.io, SEO Stack Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, Wordstream Keyword Tool, etc.

The best strategy is to use free tools like Google Keyword Planner when you are starting off. When you start making money, you can start using paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

Search Engine Ranking

Now when someone searches for a phrase on Google, the Google search algorithm uses a combination of factors (ranking factors) to determine which webpage link should appear first on top, then the next, and so on.

Google organizes these results on the fly and lists them on a page called the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP.

This page is what you usually see when you search for a phrase on Google. This result is never the same for 2 different search phrases. It’s always changing.

There are a host of ranking factors that Google has published to guide publishers. Check it out to familiarize yourself with these factors.

Ideally, searchers hardly look for answers to their search queries on the second search results page.

The best strategy to follow if you want your articles to appear on the first page of Google is to find low competition keywords with low search volume and base your articles around them.

For instance, a key phrase with a search volume of 10 – 100 is ideal. Next, type that phrase in Google search and look at the results. If there are many websites that have written good articles on that topic, don’t use it.

Rather, use it if the websites listed have not explained the topic thoroughly. If you write an article explaining the topic thoroughly, your article will appear on the first page when you publish it.

You should make sure that you explain the topic around that search phrase thoroughly. Google will reward you if you publish a high-quality, thorough, and helpful article.

Avoid high competition keywords because there are already established websites that have written articles on those keywords. Google will naturally rank them higher than yours.

This is why there are thousands of web pages that are lost and are never on the first page of Google. They went after high competition keywords.

Also look for buyer intent keywords, like best shampoo for African hair. These are keywords that suggest that someone wants to buy a product. When people go on Google, they are either looking for information or want to buy something.

For example, someone typing types of shampoo just wants to know about shampoos, whereas someone that typed the best shampoo for African hair likely wants to buy one. So the reason they type that phrase is because they want to see recommendations that will help them make better purchase decisions.

You should look for information keywords vs buyer keywords in this ratio of 7:3. That is, for every ten keywords, 7 should be information keywords, while 3 should be buyer keywords.

Your job at this stage is to find as many of these types of keywords as possible using either the paid tools or the free tools.

Another technique for finding valuable keywords is to use the Google Alphabet Soup technique. These are suggestions that Google will show you when you begin typing a phrase in the Google search form.

After you have gotten enough keywords or key phrases, compile them in a document and keep it safe.

Register a domain name and buy hosting

The next step involves registering a domain name for your website, and buying hosting. You can register a domain name at Namecheap. They offer good prices and have excellent support. Other good registrars are GoDaddy, Hostgator, Domain.com, and Bluehost.

Choose a domain name that is short and memorable. There are a lot of top-level domain suffixes available now, such as .xyz, .online, .tech, etc. You must not use .com. But if you can, use it because of its popularity.

If you want a country-specific top-level domain name, such as .com.ng, then any of the local registrars should do. GoDaddy will not be able to register that for you by the way.

You can register the name for up to 3 or 5 years to get discounts. It’s far better so that you’ll simply focus on growing your online business and not worry about renewals down the road.

Next, buy hosting. The recommended hosting companies are Bluehost, A2 Hosting, Siteground, Hostgator, and Hostinger.

You can host for 1 year or more. Just make sure that they offer free SSL and Email. All hosting companies offer you a Control Panel which you will need to log in and manage your website.

Once you are done, move on to the next step.

Set up your website

Login to your hosting Control Panel with the credentials the hosting company sent to your email. Once you are there, navigate to the section called Apps or Softaculous, or something similar. This section is usually close to the bottom of the Control Panel home page.

Inside this section, you will see WordPress. Install this application. This is the software that will run your website.

There are many software like WordPress (Magento, Joomla, Opencart, etc) that are designed to help you publish your website quickly. We chose WordPress because it is easy to use, and it is powerful enough to allow us to create any type of website without coding.

Also, WordPress has lots of plugins and themes which allow us to add extra functionality faster. Once you install WordPress, you must log in to the WordPress admin dashboard to start building your website.

Create a logo or have someone design one for you. By this time, you must have decided on a name for your website.

Configure WordPress, and install the necessary themes and plugins. This video will help guide you through the process.

You don’t need much fancy stuff on your website. Here are my recommended themes and plugins.

Astra theme – one of the most customizable and fastest WordPress themes available. This theme offers lots of customization right out of the box, so you don’t really need to tinker with the code. It’s also lightning-fast and superbly engineered. It has the basic theme and the Astra Pro plugin which allows for even more customization.

Essential WordPress Plugins

• Antispam bee (to combat spam)
• WP Forms, Yoast SEO (for SEO)
• Jetpack
• Google Analytics Dashboard
• Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
• Publishpress Blocks
• WP Rocket (for caching)
• UpdraftPlus (for backups)
• All In One WP Security & Firewall (for security)

Set up Analytics and add the website to Google Search Console

Next, you must create an analytics account at analytics.google.com. This platform helps you track the visitors coming to your website over time.

Next, add the website to Google Search Console. This is like submitting your website to Google. Once you finish the integration, any article you publish will be indexed by Google, ready to be served to visitors when the need arises.

Write at least 50 – 100 articles

At this stage, your website is live and ready to accept visitors. Remember those keywords you saved earlier on? Great. Dig up that document and open it up. Start writing your articles around those keywords.

You can outsource your articles to be written, but I wouldn’t advise that at this early stage. I would recommend that you write your articles at this stage, and set the pace of how your content should look like down the road.

You can write reviews of products or informational articles. However, be careful not to write too many reviews. People have a way of avoiding spammy reviews.

Like I said earlier, for every 10 articles you write, 3 should be reviews with buyer intent, while the rest can be informational articles.

Only write a review for a product if you can provide the best helpful information to your readers who want to buy the product. You don’t need to use a product before you can review it, but it’s best to use it before you review it.

If you do that, it will give you more authority on the product, and your readers will appreciate you for that.

Ideally, you are writing articles for US and Canadian audiences. This is because the bulk of Amazon purchases is from these 2 regions. However, Amazon has other countries with their own Amazon online store, like Italy, India, Australia, United Kingdom.

If you want to localize your website, like writing specifically for a country like the United Kingdom, just understand that the traffic isn’t as high as that of the US and Canada. You should determine this from the onset.

The major reason why I recommend writing for a US audience is that they provide the bulk of Amazon buyers throughout the year. The American audience is shopping crazy, and virtually everything is bought online.

When you have written at least 10 or 20 articles, you can begin to outsource the article writing. Look for good writers, preferably from Nigeria because they’ll charge you cheaper.

Once you finish writing, publish the article. Use relevant images inside your articles. Make sure that your articles are optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Build up your articles up to at least 50 at this stage. Also, interlink your articles. This helps the Google algorithm to better understand what your website is all about, thereby boosting your website ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

Build backlinks

A backlink is a link from another website to your own website. It’s like someone recommending you, and Google sees backlinks as a big deal. However, there are guidelines to observe when building backlinks.

You should try to build some backlinks in the early stages of growing your website. You can do this using a variety of methods, such as:

• Reaching out to webmasters with expired or broken links on their websites
• Writing guest articles for other established websites, and more. This video explains it better.

If your website is very helpful, I mean very helpful, with time other webmasters will link to your pages with useful content. Once you start accumulating backlinks, your rankings will definitely improve, resulting in more traffic to your website.

Continue publishing high-quality articles

This is to be a continuous routine. The more articles you have, the more traffic your website will command. Once your traffic gets up to like 5,000 page views in a month, then you should probably apply for an Amazon Associates account.

Once your website has up to 80-100 articles, you should slow down a bit if you like and publish like once a week. This should keep your website lively and updated.

Apply for Amazon Associates

Like we said earlier, getting an Amazon Associates account is free, just have some reasonable traffic. When you are ready, simply head over to the Associates website and apply.

After reviewing your application, you will get an email welcoming you to their affiliate program.

You will have access to your own affiliate dashboard, where you can generate affiliate links for products that you will embed in your articles. Whenever someone buys through your links, you earn a commission. It’s as simple as that!

Sign up for Payoneer and a dollar account

Payoneer allows you to receive money from your Amazon Associate account to Nigeria. You can sign up for a free Payoneer Account here.

Also, you need to create a dollar account with which you will receive money from Payoneer. We recommend GTB as the best domiciliary account-enabled bank in Nigeria. It’s very easy and stress-free to create one, especially if you already have a bank account with GTB.

Publish regularly

We’ve mentioned this before. Keep publishing and updating your articles regularly. Even if you publish an article once a month, that’s not bad. Just be consistent.

Monetize using on-page advertising

When your traffic gets over 10,000 page views per month, you can apply for advertising networks to put ads on your website. These networks include Ezoic, Mediavine, Adthrive, and others.

It has been proven that ads pay much more than affiliate links. You can leverage this to generate more revenue with your website.

Concluding thoughts

I hope this article helped you with the relevant information you needed on Affiliate Marketing in Nigeria with Amazon. If so, kindly share this article on social media. If you have questions, leave a question below using the comment form.