As a Dentist, you are a source of trust for patients and their oral health needs. Whether filling cavities or straightening their smile, the information you share with them informs their purchasing decisions. So wouldn’t it be nice to earn a small commission whenever patients follow your recommendations? Well now you can, thanks to affiliate marketing programs like Amazon Associates.
Amazon, the world’s largest online shopping destination, commands nearly 40% of total online shopping and almost everyone has an account. People trust the platform as much as they trust you, and when you refer patients to an Amazon product you believe in, you can earn commission no matter what they buy. This is passive income at its finest!
Ready to learn more about the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program? This step by step guide will walk you through the registration process and teach you how to effectively use the program as a dentist or orthodontic practice.
What is the Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing Program?
This completely free, easy to set up program lets you monetize your dental website or blog by sending patients and web traffic to Amazon product listings. When they make a purchase, you earn a percentage of the total list price. Over time, this can add up and put free money back into your pocket.
It’s called affiliate marketing, and it’s the practice of promoting other products for a commission fee. With Amazon Associates, you earn commission any time someone purchases products from Amazon using one of your affiliate links. There’s no need to get permission from the product or brand, Amazon takes care of this for you. Your referral earnings come from Amazon’s fee structure, so it doesn't cost your customer anything. It’s a win for you, your patients, and the products they buy!
How Much Does the Amazon Associates Program Pay?
Commission rates depend on the product category and range from 1% to 20%. If you share products from the home and beauty categories, you will earn 3% of the product price. So you can earn 3% on a tube of toothpaste, big deal right? Wrong. The beauty of the Amazon Associates program is that once a visitor comes to Amazon from one of your links, you get commission fees on every item they buy, whether it’s a TV or a toothbrush, during a 24 hour window.
And rarely do people buy just one item at a time. In fact, Amazon generates nearly 18.5 orders per second! If you refer someone to a specific product on Amazon, odds are they’ll add a few more items to their cart, automatically giving you more commission earnings.
How to Become an Amazon Associate
It’s free to join the program, and setup takes no more than 15 minutes to complete. You’ll begin by clicking the Sign Up button on the Amazon Associates homepage and entering your name, email and password to create the account. You can use an existing account if you have one for your business (learn more about the benefits of an Amazon Business account below), you can use a personal account you already have, or you can create a brand new account.
Whatever you decide, make sure you have access to the email account and know the mobile phone number associated with that account so you can verify it with Amazon.
Who Can Become an Amazon Associate?
Anyone! If you have a following and want to monetize it, you can create an associate account and begin earning money. It is perfect for dental assistants, RDHs, dentists, and orthodontists. You just need an informative website or approved social media account and you’re on your way to a legitimate side hustle.
However, Amazon does review all applications closely and has some important standards and expectations for websites they will accept. We recommend you review those here, and take measures to update your site accordingly before you complete the application process.
Now that you understand the Amazon Associates program, it's time to walk through the application process. It takes a bit of time, but we'll guide you every step of the way.
Creating Your Amazon Associates Account
Creating your Associates account involves submitting certain information to Amazon so they can identify you, review your website, and determine how to pay you. Here is an overview of each section you will need to complete.
Selecting a Payee
Amazon will mail your commissions via check to a designated address. If you are using a personal or business account, you’ll see pre-populated addresses where Amazon ships your orders. Select one of those, or add a brand new payee and mailing address if necessary.
Listing Your Websites & Applications
You will need to identify for Amazon the websites (or mobile applications) where you intend to place affiliate links. This will most likely be your office website or any other websites (like a personal blog) that you own or manage. You can also share affiliate links through your Facebook pages or verified social media accounts.
Review the Amazon Website Standards & Expectations to determine whether your website will meet Amazon's internal standards. It will be reviewed within about two weeks of submitting your application.
Creating Your Account Profile
Amazon will ask you to complete several inputs to create your account profile, starting with your preferred Associates Store ID. This is essentially a username, will not be visible to anyone other than you, and will be automatically generated by Amazon based on your suggestion.
Next you’ll enter a description of what your websites are about (e.g., we offer educational content about common dental issues and book appointments for our practice), and then select a primary and secondary topic from a dropdown list. For most dental practices, we recommend “Business/Industrial” for the primary topic and “Medical/Health/Beauty” for the secondary topic, but feel free to browse the list and select any topics you deem most appropriate for your sites.
Once you’ve selected your topics, you’ll select the types of Amazon items you intend to list. This information is just for Amazon’s purposes and will not prevent you from creating referral links for any items you wish. You can update these answers anytime through Account Settings. Finally, you’ll select from another dropdown list your primary and secondary website types. We recommend “Content or Niche Website” for your primary topic, and “Blog” for your secondary topic. Again, this information is just used by Amazon for internal purposes and will not inhibit your actions as an Amazon Associate.
The Amazon Associate Operating Agreement
After completing the account profile inputs, you’ll be asked to agree to the terms and conditions of the Associates Program Operating Agreement. It is not terribly long and is worth a quick review. One section in particular to note is Section 5. Identifying Yourself as an Associate.
The Federal Trade Commission requires that affiliates provide some type of disclosure indicating that when people click on a referral link on your site, that you may earn a commission for any resulting sales. This is more formal than it sounds, and is actually quite simple. Here is a great resource for creating your affiliate disclosure statement.
After you accept the terms and conditions of the operating agreement, you’ll move on to the final stages of account creation.
Traffic and Monetization
Amazon will ask you to provide information on the ways you drive traffic to your website. Common selections include Paid Search (if you do any Google or Facebook/Instagram advertising), email (if you have a customer list or monthly newsletter), Social Networks, SEO, Blogs and Lead Generation. This information is primarily for Amazon research purposes, so don’t stress over the selections.
Next, identify the ways you utilize your websites to generate income. Unless you sell products off your site (E-commerce/Online Retail) or use Google Adsense or another program to serve ads to visitors (Contextual Advertising or Display Advertising), then you will select the dropdown option for “Amazon Associates is the only way I monetize my site.”
Amazon will then ask how you “usually build links,” which is an odd question to the uninitiated. What they basically want to know is how you will place the referral links you create onto your site, so the common answer here will be to select Blog Editor (e.g., Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad) or Content Management System. Either is appropriate, but if you know that a more specific choice applies, choose that one. Again, this is just for Amazon research purposes.
Then you’ll be asked how many total unique visitors your website gets per month. If you have a Google Analytics account, you can find this out. If not, ask your website administrator if they can help you.
Next, Amazon asks why you are joining the Amazon Associates Program. We recommend you select “To monetize my site.” Finally, tell Amazon how you heard about the Affiliate program. The drop down selections are intuitive, so select whichever applies!
Your last task before completion is a simple Captcha puzzle to authenticate your submission.
Enter Your Payment and Tax Information
Once you complete the profile questions, you will receive your unique Associate ID. You will then be asked to enter your Payment and Tax Information. You can do this now, or wait until later. It is okay to do it later, as you won’t immediately begin earning affiliate revenue until verified customers make purchases from your links. But if you have the information handy, you can go ahead and enter it so you’ll be fully through with the application process.
Making Money as an Amazon Associate
Congratulations! You are now ready to start monetizing your website! You don’t need to rush to get started, but you don’t want to delay either…you only have 180 days to meet the minimum requirements of three qualified sales as an Amazon Associate. Once you have referred the necessary qualified traffic to Amazon, your site will be reviewed by specialists.
Now comes the fun part: finding products on Amazon that you love and want to recommend to your audience. Amazon makes this super easy with SiteStripe, which will automatically appear in browsing windows when you search on Amazon.com. Here’s what it looks like:
Best Practices for Amazon Associates
You can create affiliate links for any products you like on Amazon, but it’s important to think about how you plan to share these links with your audience. For example, your office might host a blog where you share oral hygiene tips or advice about braces. Including affiliate links to related products like dental wax or retainer cases makes it more likely that whoever is reading that blog might be interested in purchasing those products.
If you do have a blog, make sure you are applying Search Engine Optimization principles to increase the amount of traffic that your blog gets. While a reader in Alabama is unlikely to book a free consultation with your office in Pennsylvania, they might still order some products from Amazon and add a few more dollars to your account. Wherever you choose to place your affiliate links, try to keep this relevancy principle in mind. And don’t forget, even if someone who clicks on your link doesn’t purchase that exact product, but does purchase other products on Amazon within 24 hours of clicking your link, you’ll still earn commissions!
Monetize Your Free Samples and Promotional Products
Your patients see you as a trusted source of dental care. If you recommend a toothpaste for their sensitive teeth, they are likely to follow your advice and make that purchase! Especially if you provide free samples in their to-go bags.
Our company, Movemints Clear Aligner Mints, works with dentists and orthodontists to provide a patented, sugar-free mint with a special groove that helps clear aligner patients seat their trays, and they fight dry mouth. When practices work with us, we want to make sure they earn commissions on any Movemints products their patients purchase from Amazon. We create QR codes and product inserts to share with clear aligner patients who receive Movemints samples, making it easy to generate commissions for your Amazon Associates account.
