As the ninth most popular Internet destination, Amazon.com can certainly appear as a daunting place to try to make money, but it certainly isn't. Through their Amazon Associates program, you can review and sell any of their products on your site. Although they are moving away from PPC traffic as a way of generating sales, you can still try your luck at using the links in honest reviews. After all, you can buy nearly anything from Amazon today.

We'll assume that you don't have any type of site setup yet. While many people are able to create a simple site within a few minutes, for this experiment, you don't have anything setup and no background knowledge. The main problem here is time. As previously stated, it may only take a few minutes to create a website, but until you are able to draw in links, traffic, and create a useful website, it will be days, if not weeks, until everything is setup.

The First Step: Choose a Niche or Topic

Think about a category that you want to write about or are able to create a wide array of posts/descriptions for based on previous knowledge. Although you could simply copy the editorial reviews (putting some of it into your own words), you have to appeal to the people visiting your site or blog. They need to be aware that you have some background and know what you are talking about.

Second Step: Learning What it Takes

Setting up a site can be a hard task for some to do. You'll need to research how to insert images, text, and links into a typical site (HTML) and how to style them using CSS. Using a pre-built template may be your best option, but you have less control if you go this course.

Next, you should do some research on what works in terms of marketing products to others and promoting your blog. It is best to get started now, versus later, as it gives you more options when you write your content and are optimizing it for search engines.

Third Step: Purchasing a Site and Starting Out

I'd suggest that you purchase a hosting account and domain of your own. Even though you still have the ability to earn with Blogger and other free services, when it comes to managing your files and ensuring that your site remains "yours," it is best that you use a paid plan.

Choose a domain name that really works for you. Don't use your name in it, unless you are promoting your own products that you sell through Amazon, and this is less likely, unless you are a larger publisher/merchant.

If you go the most affordable route, you could be investing as little as $100/year into your site, more expensive plans can cost into the thousands, but you are just starting out, so you don't need thousands of megabytes of transfer or storage.

Fourth Step: Begin Creating Content

The next step is to install the blog or some type of software onto your site that allows you to manage all of your content. Once you have accomplished this (the first time can be confusing, but still remain fairly easy if you follow the instructions), start creating the content. Take a product that you have used – that may be a book, movie, or music album that you enjoyed – and post images, links, and your own review of it.

This may be a great way to get started making money online, especially if you enjoy reviewing your favorite products. Keep in mind that publishing negative reviews won't always harm your sales numbers, as it informs your readers to what they can expect, and may send them to another one of your products.

Fifth Step: Finalization

Each day (or at a fairly frequent interval), create a new piece of content for your site. They don't have to all be reviews, as you should mix it up between reviews and tips/advice on using the products in real life.

Other options from Amazon include the aStore, which handles all of your sales and your hosting. However, there may be costs involved at some point, so you should probably continue working on your own project and sites rather than going the "easy" way.

Conclusion

While I covered many of the basics, you need to be aware that a lot of additional factors go into play when it comes to traffic versus sales figures. Although you can certainly make a lot of money selling others' products, you have to realize that it doesn't come easy and without effort on your part.